Düsseldorf, July 15, 2024 – Artificial intelligence (AI) cannot be recognized as an inventor. This was the conclusion reached by the Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof – BGH) in the ruling handed down on June 11, 2024 (AZ X ZB 5/22), according to which only natural persons can be considered inventors under patent law. Naming an AI as the inventor will result in a rejection of the patent application, according to the court.
The subject of the proceedings was the AI system DABUS (Device for the Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience), which has conceived of a food container and a flashing beacon for emergencies and, since 2019, has been named as the “inventor” in several international patent applications. Numerous patent offices and courts worldwide, including the European Patent Office (EPO) and courts in the USA, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK, have rejected DABUS as an inventor. “Such clear agreement between different institutions is rare in case law, but was certainly foreseeable,” says Gottfried Schüll, patent attorney and partner at Cohausz & Florack (C&F). In its ruling, the Federal Court of Justice held that “a system that searches for technical teachings without any human preparation or influence” (...) does not exist “according to the current state of scientific knowledge.”
“The decision of the Federal Court of Justice helps to further objectivize the discussion surrounding the potential of artificial intelligence,” says Schüll. The judgement will bring clarity in terms of how inventions created under the influence of AI systems are dealt with going forward.
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