USPTO issues new guidelines on the analysis of inventorship in AI-assisted inventions

USPTO issues new guidelines on the analysis of inventorship in AI-assisted inventions

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) published, on November 28, 2025, new guidelines on the identification of inventors in inventions developed with the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) systems, fully revoking the directive previously issued in February 2024. The agency reaffirms that the U.S. legal framework does not allow any differentiated regime for AI-assisted inventions and that only natural persons may be recognized as inventors. This understanding, already consolidated by federal courts, expressly prevents algorithmic systems from being named as inventors or co-inventors in patent applications, requiring the rejection of any filings that do so.

The new guidance emphasizes that the central legal criterion for determining inventorship remains the traditional concept of conception, understood as the formation, in the mind of the inventor, of a definite and permanent idea of the complete and operative invention as it is to be applied in practice, and capable of being carried out by a person of ordinary skill in the art. In this sense, conception is complete when the inventor has a specific and settled idea, a particular solution to the problem at hand, and not merely a general objective or a research plan. Accordingly, artificial intelligence systems are treated as supporting tools, comparable to software, databases, or laboratory equipment, whose use does not confer any portion of inventorship on the machine nor diminish the degree of intellectual control required from the inventor over all elements of the claimed subject matter.

One of the main advances in the new document is the revocation of the approach adopted in February 2024 guidance, which applied the factors from the precedent Pannu v. Iolab Corp to the analysis of joint inventorship in AI-assisted inventions, even when the invention had only one human inventor. The USPTO clarifies in the new guidance that those factors apply exclusively to the analysis of human coinventors. Thus, when there is only one human inventor, the traditional conception standard applies exclusively; and when multiple human inventors participate in the process, the Pannu joint inventorship test applies, without any modification arising from the use of AI.

Therefore, regardless of whether the co-inventors used an AI system to assist in developing the invention, joint inventorship will be assessed using the Pannu test exclusively as it concerns the evaluation of inventorship among human inventors. When there is only one human inventor, the inventorship analysis—whether or not the invention was AI-assisted—will be based on the principle of conception.

Finally, the USPTO explains that applications claiming priority to earlier national or foreign filings will only be accepted if they name at least one human inventor in common with the priority application. Foreign filings that allow the designation of artificial intelligence systems as inventors cannot serve as a basis for priority in the United States unless a human inventor is properly identified.

The new guidance can be accessed at the following link: revised inventorship guidance

Note: For quick release, this English version is provided by automated translation without human review.