DABUS

The European Patent Office (EPO) refused two European patent applications naming DABUS as inventor on similar grounds as in the U.S. (see below).[2][3] The two EPO decisions are under appeal, as of August 2020.[4]

Similar applications were filed by Thaler to the United Kingdom Intellectual Property Office on 17 October and 7 November 2018. The Office asked Thaler to file statements of inventorship and of right of grant to a patent (Patent Form 7) in respect of each invention within 16 months of the filing date. Thaler filed those forms naming DABUS as the inventor and explaining in some detail why he believed that machines should be regarded as inventors in the circumstances.

His application was rejected on the grounds that: (1) naming a machine as inventor did not meet the requirements of the Patents Act 1977; and (2) the IPO was not satisfied as to the manner in which Thaler had acquired rights that would otherwise vest in the inventor. Thaler was not satisfied with the decision and asked for a hearing before an official known as the "hearing officer". By a decision dated 4 December 2019 the hearing officer rejected Thaler's appeal.[5]

Thaler appealed against the hearing officer's decision to the Patents Court (a specialist court within the Chancery Division of the High Court of England and Wales that determined patent, registered design, plant varieties and semiconductor topography disputes). The appeal came on before Mr Justice Marcus Smith on 15 July 2020, who handed down his decision in Thaler v The Comptroller-General of Patents, Designs And Trade Marks [2020] EWHC 2412 (Pat).[6] The judge upheld the decision of the hearing officer.

The patent applications on the inventions were refused by the USPTO, which held that only natural persons can be named as inventors in a patent application.[7][8]