Jurisdiction(s):
United Kingdom

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Key definition

Patent definition

What does Patent mean? A patent is a registrable intellectual property right used in practice to protect a technical invention by giving the owner, in the relevant territory, the exclusive right to stop others making, using, selling or importing the claimed invention without consent. In the UK (England & Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland) and Ireland, the regime is statutory (Patents Act 1977; Patents Act 1992) and aligned with the European Patent Convention, so usage is broadly consistent. To be patentable, an invention must be new, involve an inventive step, be capable of industrial application and not fall within excluded subject matter (for example,...

Thaler/DABUS: global tracker of patent and copyright rulings on AI inventorship and authorship

Published by a LexisNexis IP expert

Practice notes

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This tracker sets out the key decisions and information relating to the proceedings concerning:

patent applications for inventions claimed to be created by DABUS (device for the autonomous bootstrapping of unified sentience), an AI ‘creativity machine’ developed by Dr Stephen Thaler
a copyright registration for an image generated by Thaler’s ‘creativity machine’

It records pivotal rulings in the UK, across Europe and worldwide from patent offices — including the UK Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO) and the European Patent Office (EPO) — as well as national courts.

With the exception of South Africa, where substantive examination of patent filings is not undertaken, patent offices and courts in multiple jurisdictions have refused Thaler’s patent applications on the basis that an AI system cannot qualify as an inventor under the applicable patent laws. This reflects a legal consensus that the named inventor on a patent must be a human being.

In Switzerland, the patent application was rejected because Swiss patent law requires a ‘natural person’ to be identified as the inventor; however, a subsidiary request to designate Dr Thaler as the inventor was accepted. The US copyright proceedings raise comparable questions concerning authorship of works...

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Web page updated on 22/05/2026

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