Facts
In October and November 2018 Dr Stephen Thaler filed two UK patent applications. He stated that he was not the inventor, that the inventions had been made by DABUS, a machine acting autonomously and powered by artificial intelligence, and that he was entitled to the patents as owner of the machine. On 4 December 2019 the Hearing Officer for the Comptroller decided that DABUS could not be regarded as an inventor and that ownership of DABUS did not entitle Dr Thaler to apply; the applications would be taken to be withdrawn at the end of the 16-month period. The High Court dismissed his appeal, and the Court of Appeal did so by a majority.
Question
The court considered three issues: whether the term 'inventor' in sections 7 and 13 of the Patents Act 1977 extends to a machine such as DABUS; whether Dr Thaler, as owner of DABUS, was entitled to apply for and obtain patents for technical advances it made; and whether the Hearing Officer was right to treat the applications as withdrawn. It stressed that the appeal did not concern the broader question whether technical advances generated autonomously by AI ought to be patentable.
Decision
The Supreme Court unanimously dismissed the appeal, Lord Kitchin giving the judgment. An inventor within the meaning of the Act must be a natural person. Section 7 is a complete code for entitlement: there must be an inventor, and any other applicant must claim through that inventor. DABUS is not a person and so is not an inventor. The argument that Dr Thaler owned the inventions through his ownership of DABUS, including by analogy with the doctrine of accession, was rejected. The applications were deemed withdrawn at the end of the 16-month period under rule 10(3) of the Patents Rules 2007.
Why it matters
The judgment settles that a UK patent application must name a natural person as inventor. The court left to Parliament the question whether AI-generated inventions should be protected. Whether a human who uses AI as a tool may be named as inventor was not examined, since Dr Thaler made no such claim. The ruling is in line with the refusal of DABUS applications in some other jurisdictions, although South Africa granted a DABUS patent in 2021.
Related stages
Below: Court of Appeal, [2021] EWCA Civ 1374 (appeal dismissed by a majority). Later: in Thaler v Comptroller [2025] EWHC 2202 (Ch), decided on 1 September 2025, the High Court dismissed Dr Thaler's appeal concerning a divisional application.