EPO Provides Reasoning for Rejecting Patent Applications Citing AI as Inventor

Earlier this month, the European Patent Office (EPO) and the UK Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO) each rejected two patent applications that designated an artificial intelligence named DABUS as the inventor. While the UKIPO published a decision setting out its reasoning, the EPO simply stated at the time that the applications did “not meet the requirement of the European Patent Convention (EPC) that an inventor designated in the application has to be a human being, not a machine.” Now, the EPO has released more detail about the grounds for its decision. In the EPO press release today, the Office explained: “The EPO considered that the interpretation of the legal framework of the European patent system leads to the conclusion that the inventor designated in a European patent must be a natural person. The Office further noted that the understanding of the term inventor as referring to a natural person appears to be an internationally applicable standard, and that various national courts have issued decisions to this effect.”

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