‘AI is not an Inventor’: Thaler v Comptroller of Patents, Designs and Trademarks and the Patentability of AI Inventions

Abstract

The increasing use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies in inventive processes raises numerous patent law issues, including whether AI can be an inventor under law and who owns the AI‐generated inventions. The UK Supreme Court decision in Thaler v Comptroller of Patents, Designs and Trademarks has provided an ultimate answer to this question: AI cannot be an inventor for the purposes of patent law. This note argues, first, that while such a human‐centric approach to inventorship might discourage the use and development of AI technologies with autonomous invention capabilities, it will help retain an active human involvement in technologically supported inventive processes and continuously foster human ingenuity. Second, despite the Court focusing on what patent law is and not on what the law should be, the decision will be influential in the ongoing discussions on the future of patent law and will make it more difficult to expand patent law to incorporate non‐human inventors. Third, the decision has opened, or revealed, the gaps in patent law that the emergence of AI technologies have created and for which new legal solutions will be needed, especially with relation to the ownership of AI‐assisted inventions and the validation of inventorship claims.