Left on the Sidelines: The Canadian Patent Appeal Board Rules that Artificial Intelligence Cannot Hold Inventorship Status

Whether AI can be an “inventor” was the key issue in an important recent ruling of the Canadian Patent Appeal Board (the “PAB”). In Thaler, Stephen L. (Re), 2025 CACP 8, the PAB had to decide whether Canadian Patent Application No. 3,137,161, which identified as the sole inventor of its two underlying inventions “Device for the Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience” (“DABUS”), rather than a human being, satisfied the requirements for a patent to be granted under Canadian patent law….
By: Stikeman Elliott LLP