United States of America: Issued Supreme Court ruling rejecting appeal petition (Thaler v USPTO)

On 24 April 2023, the US Supreme Court denied the petition filed by Stephen Thaler to hear a challenge against the US Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO) decision refusing to issue patents for inventions created by artificial intelligence (AI). On 8 June 2020, Dr Stephen Thaler filed a claim before the District Court for the Easter State of Virginia against the USPTO after it refused two patent applications where an AI system was listed as the sole inventor because it deemed that a machine did not qualify as an inventor. The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit agreed with the District Court and the USPTO, stating that an inventor listed on a patent application must be human since the Patent Act expressly provides that inventors are “individuals.”