"Under current law, only natural persons can be inventors on a patent. But as AI systems become more sophisticated and domain-specific, questions emerge about whether the creators of such AI might contribute to the conception of inventions generated with their tools. Consider this scenario: a scientific researcher uses a highly specialized AI model (designed for, say, molecular drug design) to discover a new pharmaceutical compound."
"Is the AI's developer - who trained and fine-tuned the model to solve such molecular design problems - a silent joint inventor of that compound? If so, that developer would be a co-owner of the patent by law, even though they never met the researcher. This scenario implicates a looming tension between traditional inventorship doctrine (focused on human inventors) and the evolving reality of AI-assisted innovation."
"Under the Patent Act, only a natural human being-can be an inventor. In Thaler v. Vidal, the Federal Circuit confirmed this, holding explicitly that AI systems cannot qualify as inventors. While the court did not rule on inventions created with AI assistance, it emphasized that the Patent Act provides no basis to include non-human inventors. Misidentifying inventors, including listing non-humans, can render a patent invalid or ungrantable."
Current patent law restricts inventorship to natural human beings. The Federal Circuit in Thaler v. Vidal confirmed that AI systems cannot be patent inventors. Increasingly sophisticated, domain-specific AI tools raise questions whether AI creators materially contribute to conception of inventions produced with those tools. Joint inventorship requires a significant contribution to conception, and misidentifying inventors can invalidate a patent. A scenario can arise where a researcher uses a specialized AI model to discover a compound while the developer trained and fine-tuned the model. The developer's role in shaping outputs could be asserted as silent joint inventorship, creating ownership and legal disputes without clearer standards.
Read at IPWatchdog.com | Patents & Intellectual Property Law
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