The U.S. Patent Office has issued new rules clarifying how inventions developed with the help of AI can be patented. AI systems like ChatGPT or Gemini are now explicitly treated as tools, similar to lab equipment or software, and cannot be named as inventors. What remains crucial is that a human must develop the complete inventive idea and be able to describe it precisely.
The office is thereby discarding earlier 2024 guidelines that treated AI contributions similarly to those of human co-inventors. The rules apply to all types of patents and warn that foreign applications listing AI as the sole inventor cannot claim priority in the United States.