AI-generated inventions denied patent protection again at the High Court

High Court ruling

Earlier this month, in Thaler v Comptroller-General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks [2025] EWHC 2202 (Ch), the High Court dismissed Dr Thaler's appeal from the UK Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO)'s decision that his latest divisional patent application was to be deemed withdrawn because he had failed to comply with s.13(2) of the Patents Act 1977 (which requires an applicant to identify the inventor of the patented invention). In particular, Deputy Judge Michael Tappin found that Dr Thaler's statement that he (rather than DABUS) was in fact the inventor of the inventions was "obviously defective" given he had consistently maintained in previous applications that DABUS was the rightful inventor.

Dr Thaler argued that he had revised his position on inventorship because of the Supreme Court's decision against him in late 2023 that a machine could not be an inventor for the purposes of a patent because an inventor must be a 'natural person' (see our blog here: Supreme Court rules that an AI machine is not an inventor). However, the judge found that it was apparent as a matter of fact from Dr Thaler's own previous statements that DABUS was the "actual deviser" of the inventions, having (for example) conceived of them autonomously and independently, and having recognised itself that what it had produced was an invention.

Comment

While the High Court's decision here was clearly fact-specific (and relied heavily on previous statements of fact made by Dr Thaler), it highlights again the lack of UK patent protection available to AI-generated inventions where the machine owner has not made a sufficient inventive contribution. The judge commented that, in order to improve the transparency of the patent application system, changes could be made at the UKIPO level, noting that "consideration should be given to whether provision needs to be made requiring an AI-generated invention to be identified as such (as the USPTO has done)". There is a large question mark, however, over whether such changes would address the substantial gap that appears to be forming in patent law which fails to provide adequate protection for non-human inventions. Until this gap is addressed, prospective patentees should tread carefully and consider whether the role of any AI within their inventive process could in fact deprive them of patent protection in the long-term.