AI Can’t Be Listed as Inventor on Patent Applications, Japan’s Top Court Rules

Yomiuri Shimbun file photo

The Supreme Court

The Yomiuri Shimbun

15:41 JST, March 6, 2026

The Supreme Court has dismissed an American engineer’s appeal to have artificial intelligence named as the inventor on a patent application.

The engineer had claimed the Patent Office’s rejection of the application was illegal. But in a decision dated Wednesday, the court’s Second Petty Bench turned down the engineer’s request to have the rejection overturned.

The top court’s decision finalized the rulings of the Tokyo District Court and the Intellectual Property High Court, which had dismissed the plaintiff’s request and said inventors under the Patent Law are restricted to “natural persons.”

According to the rulings by the two lower courts, the plaintiff submitted an application in 2020 for food containers and other items invented by DABUS, an artificial intelligence the plaintiff had created. The plaintiff had listed the inventor’s name as “DABUS, the artificial intelligence that autonomously invented this invention.” The Patent Office ordered the plaintiff to provide the name of a person as the inventor. The plaintiff refused to do so, and the application was rejected.

In this lawsuit, the plaintiff insisted that “patent applications even for inventions created by AI should be accepted.” However, the district court ruled that the Patent Law “presumes that an inventor is a natural person.” The high court supported this position.

The high court also said the law had not anticipated the rapid development of AI, and that answering the question of whether patent rights should be granted to AI-created inventions “would require discussion given the impact this would have on society.”