USPTO Revised Inventorship Guidance for AI-Assisted Inventions (2025)
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Revised Inventorship Guidance for AI-Assisted Inventions
United States — federal
USPTO examination guidance
90 Fed. Reg. 54636–54637; FR Doc. 2025-21457; Docket PTO-P-2025-0014
Published November 28, 2025; rescinds and replaces the February 2024 guidance.[1]
No separate effective date stated in the reviewed notice.[1]
October 18, 2026 — complete Federal Register notice.[1]
Revised Inventorship Guidance for AI-Assisted Inventions is USPTO examination guidance published on November 28, 2025. It rescinds the February 13, 2024 guidance in its entirety and applies the ordinary human-inventorship standard whether or not AI assisted the inventive process. It is agency guidance, rather than an enacted AI statute.[1]
Human conception and AI tools
The notice relies on Thaler v. Vidal for the rule that only natural persons may be named as inventors. It treats AI systems as tools that can provide services and generate ideas, rather than inventors or joint inventors. For an invention developed by one person with AI assistance, the question is whether that person conceived the claimed invention under the traditional standard.[1]
Conception requires a definite, settled idea of the complete and operative invention, rather than a general research goal. The guidance describes a fact-intensive inquiry into whether the person possessed knowledge of all claimed limitations and could describe the invention sufficiently for a person of ordinary skill to put it into practice without extensive research or experimentation.[1]
Joint inventorship and examination
The replacement withdraws the 2024 approach of applying the Pannu joint-inventorship factors to a sole human's use of AI. Those factors apply to contributions by multiple natural persons. Each claimed joint inventor must make a significant contribution to conception or reduction to practice, a contribution that is not insignificant relative to the full invention, and more than an explanation of well-known concepts or the existing state of the art. AI use does not change that analysis among human contributors.[1]
The USPTO generally presumes that people named in the application data sheet or inventor's oath or declaration are the actual inventors. The notice directs rejection under 35 U.S.C. §§ 101 and 115, or other appropriate action, for all claims in an application naming an AI system or another non-natural person as an inventor or joint inventor.[1]
Patent types and priority claims
The guidance covers utility, design and plant patents and applications. For plant patents, it describes a required contribution to creating the plant beyond appreciating its uniqueness and reproducing it asexually.[1]
For benefit or priority claims under 35 U.S.C. §§ 119, 120, 121, 365 or 386, the prior and U.S. applications must share the same natural-person inventor or at least one natural-person joint inventor. A foreign application naming only an AI tool cannot supply an accepted priority claim. Where a foreign application names both humans and AI, the U.S. application data sheet must name only the human inventors, including one in common with the foreign application. The notice also addresses naming the natural-person inventors when entering the U.S. national stage under § 371.[1]
Publication and replacement
The November 28, 2025 notice expressly replaces the February 13, 2024 guidance, 89 Fed. Reg. 10043. The reviewed notice does not specify a separate effective date.[1]