German Federal Court of Justice: an inventor must be a natural person (DABUS)

In particular, the court decided that

• a machine-based system comprising hardware and software elements cannot be designated as an inventor, even if it has an artificial intelligence (AI),
• it is compulsory and possible to name a natural person as inventor, even if the claimed technical teaching has been found using an AI-system,
• naming of a natural person as inventor in the official form while requesting to include in the description that the invention has been generated or created by AI, does not comply with the requirements of the German Patent Act with respect to the designation of the inventor, and
• an addendum of a sufficiently clear designation of the inventor by the statement that the inventor caused a further specified AI to create the invention is irrelevant from a legal point of view and does not justify a rejection of the application based on this addendum.

Thus, in Germany, only a natural person can be named as an inventor on a patent application. We will shortly provide a detailed analysis of the decision and its consequences.