Statutory Text, Legal Personhood, and the Non-Human Inventor: Why Formalism Has (So Far) Prevailed
Abstract Can an artificial intelligence (AI) system be an “inventor” under contemporary patent statutes? Across leading jurisdictions, courts and patent offices have converged on “no,” grounding outcomes in textualist readings of inventor provisions that presuppose a natural person. This article analyzes the Full Federal Court of Australia’s reversal in Commissioner of Patents v Thaler FCAFC…