In 2022, a US appeals court in Washington, DC, ruled that an AI system called DABUS could not be listed as an inventor because US statutes define an inventor as an "individual," meaning a human being.
Notes on verification
Confirmed by multiple independent legal sources reporting on Thaler v. Vidal (Fed. Cir., Aug. 5, 2022); details on year, AI system, ruling, and statutory reasoning all corroborated. [tier=unverified indep_score=0.3 clusters=3 claim_tier=notable] [rescored 2026-09-15: curated origin-host map (PR #65); unclassified hosts no longer scored as aggregators]
Sources
- MIT Technology Review (seed:technology_and_ai)
- https://www.akingump.com/en/insights/alerts/federal-circuit-confirms-inventor-must-be-human-not-ai (corroboration)
- https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=055e8fc5-f081-4972-b59e-e9a4057daf66 (corroboration)
- https://www.jonesday.com/en/insights/2022/08/federal-circuit-affirms-patent-inventors-must-be-human-not-ai (corroboration)