In this post, Rachel Free (Partner), Toby Sears (Partner) and Omri Shirion (Associate) of the CMS Intellectual Property team, preview the UK Supreme Court’s upcoming hearing of Thaler v Comptroller-General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks. This case concerns the treatment under the Patents Act 1977 (the “1977 Act”) of inventions created by artificial intelligence (“AI”) machines in the absence of a human inventor.

The Appellant, Dr Stephen Thaler, previously appealed a decision of the UK Intellectual Property Office (“UKIPO”) that two UK patent applications should be deemed withdrawn because they named an AI machine, ‘DABUS,’ as the inventor.