Background
In Thaler v Comptroller-General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks, Stephen Thaler sought to obtain UK patents naming his AI system DABUS as inventor. The UKIPO refused the applications, and after appeals, the Supreme Court dismissed the case, confirming that under the Patents Act 1977 only a natural person can be an inventor.
AI interaction
‘An inventor within the meaning of the 1977 Act must be a natural person, and DABUS is not a person at all, let alone a natural person.’ The ruling provided the UK’s definitive position that AI systems cannot be inventors, closing the DABUS litigation path in the UK and showing that legislative reform would be required for change.
Note: DABUS (Device for the Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Science) is an AI system created by Stephen Thaler. Thaler pursued parallel test cases worldwide, naming DABUS as inventor to challenge the limits of patent law. Courts and offices in the UK, EPO, Australia and USA all reached the same outcome: only humans can be inventors under current law.