A Legal Study on AI Inventorship Under Patent Law in Germany and the United States

This thesis asks a provocative question: Can AI be an inventor? The answer is: Yes. To demonstrate this, five steps are taken. First, the '2/7 Questions Process', derived from German and US patent law, is applied to compare inventorship rules and assess the roles of programmers, data suppliers, trainers, owners, operators, and AI itself – showing that AI inventorship can be affirmed under current law. Second, major patent theories – such as incentive, personhood, Lockean labour, and utilitarian theories – are reviewed to evaluate AI inventorship. Third, from legal and historical views, corporate inventorship’s denial and the status of enslaved people and animals are examined. Fourth, practical reasons for granting AI legal personality and inventorship are discussed. Finally, from a philosophical view, if non-human and human natures are not fundamentally different, this supports recognizing AI inventorship.