AI Inventors? Thaler Commissioner Decision

There is an aphorism, ““If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” But, according to another aphorism ““Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Well, when it comes to Stephen Thaler, the latter aphorism appears apt. Try as he might, he has consistently lost court cases around the world which rejected his contention that content generated entirely by an artificial intelligence system can be protected either by copyrights or patents. This includes losses before the U.S. D.C Circuit (rejecting his claim that AI generated synthetic content can be protected by copyright,) and the U.K. Supreme Court, U.S. Federal Circuit, the Full Court of Australia, and European Patent Office which all rejected the claim that an inventor can be an artificial intelligence system. Thaler just lost again before the Canadian Patent Appeal Board in Thaler, Stephen L. (Re), 2025 CACP 8, which rejected his application for a patent entirely devised by the artificial intelligence system known as DABUS (Device for Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience), which Thaler created and owns.

The unsurprising conclusions of the PAB and the decision of the Commissioner were summarized as follows:

• “inventor” as used in the Patent Act and Patent Rules is limited to a natural person or persons;
• since DABUS is an artificial intelligence system, it cannot be recognized as the “inventor” and therefore the application cannot be filed by “the inventor or the inventor’s legal representative” as required by subsection 27(2) of the Patent Act; and
• a valid “inventor” cannot be identified according to the requirements of subsection 54(1) of the Patent Rules.

Of course, inventions can patentable using AI systems if there is sufficient human contribution to the invention. Similarly, content can be protected by copyright to the extent there is sufficient human authorship (skill and judgment) that went into the creation of the work.  Thaler’s futile efforts so far have not helped answer where the lines should be drawn in these situations.