European Union: Legal Board of Appeal dismisses appeal on patent applications designating AI as inventor

On 21 December 2021, the European Patent Office's (EPO) Legal Board of Appeal confirmed that, under the European Patent Convention (EPC), an inventor named in a patent application must be a human individual and not a machine. The ruling was made in response to an appeal from the EPO's Receiving Section, which had previously denied two applications in which the artificial intelligence system known DABUS was named as patent inventor. According to the Receiving Section only a human inventor qualifies as inventor under the EPC, and a machine could not transfer any rights to the patent application. The Legal Board of Appeal agreed with these points, emphasising that an inventor must have legal competence under the EPC.