Can AI file patents?

The US Patent and Trademark Office refused on April 27 that an AI can be registered as inventor or co-inventor of a patent, ruling that only "natural persons" can be assigned the status of inventor. Last December, the European Patent Office issued a similar decision for similar motives.

However, as this article explains, the case of the Dabus system, created by the physicist Stephen Thaler, founder of the company Imagination Engines Inc. specializing in creative artificial intelligence based on artificial neural networks, raises its own questions. Indeed, Mr. Thaler considers that he cannot be declared an inventor since he did not intervene in the process and does not hold any specific competence in the field linked to the invention produced.

This content has been updated on 5 May 2020 at 20 h 01 min.