AI Drug Patents Must Name Human Inventors — SkimNews
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- Insilico Medicine claimed in a press release that its generative AI "discovered" a pulmonary fibrosis drug, but the patent names five humans including CEO Alex Zhavoronkov as the drug's inventors.
- A Washington, DC appeals court ruled in 2022 in the DABUS test case that an AI cannot be named a patent inventor, holding that the statute's use of "individual" means a human being.
- The US Patent and Trademark Office reversed Biden-era guidance on AI co-inventorship under the Trump administration and now treats AI as "merely a tool, like a calculator," with no requirement to disclose it.
- Ryan Abbott, the attorney who brought the DABUS case pro bono, warns that excluding AI-generated outputs from patent protection could "put a damper on future drug development."
- Isomorphic Labs chief business and legal officer Sarah Korman said at MIT Technology Review's EmTech event that patent laws "will need to evolve" as AI contributes more autonomously.
- Alex Zhavoronkov says Insilico's human chemists still synthesize compounds, create variants, and run animal tests — and would still be named on patents even if the process were fully roboticized.
Why it matters: For AI drug companies like Insilico, the legal gap between AI-branded discovery claims and human-only patent filings creates a documentation burden and a credibility chasm between marketing and IP filings. Abbott's warning that excluding AI outputs from protection could "put a damper on future drug development" points to a real policy risk: if AI-discovered molecules can't be cleanly patented, the IP moat around computationally generated drugs weakens.
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