When AI Designs a Drug, the Patent Still Names a Human

When the biotech company Insilico Medicine used its computer models to propose a promising drug for pulmonary fibrosis, it publicly announced that the molecule had been "discovered by" its generative AI platform. But when it came time to file a patent to protect the new chemical structure, the company made no mention of AI. Instead, the patent names five humans, including CEO Alex Zhavoronkov, as the drug's "inventors."

The discrepancy points to a wrinkle in intellectual-property law: no matter how fundamental an AI is to a discovery, only humans can take credit for an invention. US courts reached that conclusion after patent attorney Ryan Abbott brought a pro bono case naming an AI system called DABUS as the inventor of a more efficient food container. In 2022, an appeals court in Washington, DC, ruled that US statutes describe an inventor as an "individual" — meaning a human being — so a machine cannot be named as one.

"There needs to be a human inventor or there's no invention and no patent," said Sarah Korman, a patent attorney who is now chief business and legal officer of Isomorphic Labs, an Alphabet spinout focused on AI-designed drugs. She added that there is "no doubt" patent law will need to evolve to keep pace with AI. The US Patent and Trademark Office has itself acknowledged that "an AI system—like other tools—may perform acts that, if performed by a human, could constitute inventorship under our laws," making the key question whether a human contributed enough to qualify as an inventor.

Abbott believes AI-generated drug patents could face legal challenges, since one way to invalidate a patent is to show it lists the wrong inventors. At Insilico, Zhavoronkov says human chemists still have to synthesize the proposed drugs, create variants and test them on animals: "That's the person who is going to be named on the patent," he said, adding that even in a fully automated process, "someone will still push the button and give the budget."

Whether pushing that button should count as inventing is, in Abbott's view, a question for future legal cases. "What if I asked Claude to cure cancer, and it did?" he said. "I think it would be inappropriate to claim that I invented that."