Thaler v Vidal

Case Information

Case name	Thaler v. Vidal
Court	U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit; originating in E.D. Virginia
Docket	Appeal 2021-2347; district case 1:20-cv-00903-LMB-TCB
Filed	2020 (district action); 2021 (appeal)
Judge(s)	Federal Circuit panel: Kimberly A. Moore, Richard G. Taranto and Leonard P. Stark; district judge Leonie M. Brinkema
Plaintiff / appellant	Stephen L. Thaler
Defendant / appellee	USPTO Director (Katherine K. Vidal at the appellate decision)
Case type	Civil patent / administrative-law appeal
Claims / issues	Whether an artificial-intelligence system may be named as an inventor under the Patent Act
Status	April 24, 2023: Supreme Court denied certiorari after the Federal Circuit affirmed the natural-person inventorship requirement on August 5, 2022.

Thaler v. Vidal (Case No. 21-2347, Federal Circuit; 43 F.4th 1207) is a landmark patent case establishing that only natural persons can be named as inventors under the U.S. Patent Act, rejecting the argument that an AI system can qualify as an inventor.

Background

Stephen Thaler developed DABUS, identified in the Federal Circuit opinion as Device for the Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Science. He asserted that it generated the inventions without his contribution to their conception.

In 2019, Thaler filed two U.S. patent applications naming DABUS as the sole inventor: one for a fractal beverage container and another for a neural flame device designed for search-and-rescue. The USPTO rejected both applications as incomplete, stating that "a machine does not qualify as an inventor" under the Patent Act.

Thaler petitioned the USPTO Director to review the rejections, but the petitions were denied on April 22, 2020. Thaler then sued the USPTO under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

District Court Ruling

The district court granted summary judgment for the USPTO, holding that inventors must be human under the Patent Act and adjudicating based on the PTO administrative record. The court found that the statutory text of 35 U.S.C. §§ 100, 101, 115, and 281 all presuppose that inventors are natural persons capable of taking oaths, making statements, and holding property rights.

Federal Circuit Ruling

On August 5, 2022, the Federal Circuit affirmed the district court in an opinion by Judge Leonard P. Stark, on a panel with Chief Judge Kimberly A. Moore and Judge Richard G. Taranto. The court held that the Patent Act requires inventors to be "natural persons" or "individuals," and that DABUS, as AI software, cannot be listed as an inventor.

Key holdings:

• The term "inventor" as used in the Patent Act refers to an "individual" — which the Supreme Court has interpreted to mean a natural person
• The Act's requirements for inventors to execute oaths, sign declarations, and make factual statements presuppose human capacity
• Thaler's policy arguments — that allowing AI inventorship would promote innovation — lacked basis in the Act's text
• The court rejected arguments based on constitutional patent purposes, noting these do not override statutory text

Supreme Court Denial

Thaler filed his petition for certiorari on March 17, 2023, in Supreme Court docket No. 22-919. The Court denied the petition on April 24, 2023, leaving the Federal Circuit judgment in place.

International Parallel Litigation

Thaler pursued DABUS patent applications in multiple jurisdictions. The Federal Circuit recorded in its August 5, 2022 opinion that South Africa had granted patents naming DABUS, while explaining that this did not determine the meaning of the U.S. Patent Act. Other verified decisions include:

• European Patent Office: In J 0008/20, decided December 21, 2021, the Legal Board of Appeal dismissed Thaler's appeal from refusal of the food-container application and held that a machine is not an inventor within the European Patent Convention.
• United Kingdom: On December 20, 2023, the Supreme Court unanimously dismissed Thaler's appeal in [2023] UKSC 49. It held that an inventor under the Patents Act 1977 must be a natural person and that ownership of DABUS did not itself entitle Thaler to the patents. The appeal concerned the existing statute, rather than whether autonomous machine-generated advances should be patentable as a matter of policy.

Significance

The Federal Circuit decided whether AI itself could be named as an inventor; it expressly left the treatment of inventions made by humans with AI assistance for another case.

In revised examination guidance published on November 28, 2025, the USPTO rescinded its February 2024 AI-assisted inventorship guidance in full. The replacement applies the ordinary human-conception standard regardless of AI use. It treats AI as a tool, not an inventor or joint inventor. The Pannu joint-inventorship factors apply when evaluating contributions by multiple natural persons, not when analyzing a sole human's use of AI as though the AI were a second inventor.

Counsel

Ryan Abbott argued for plaintiff-appellant Stephen Thaler in the Federal Circuit appeal.

See Also

• DABUS
• Creativity Machine

• Thaler v. Perlmutter — Supreme Court Denies Review on AI Authorship — Parallel copyright case by same plaintiff
• Cases — AI litigation directory

References