The United States Patent and Trademark Office released new guidance on artificial intelligence and inventorship on November 28, 2025, clarifying that the same standards for inventorship apply to all inventions regardless of whether AI was used in their creation.
Under the previous standards, inventorship analysis for AI-assisted inventions relied heavily on legal principles developed for joint inventorship among multiple human beings, particularly the Pannu factors. Those factors assessed whether each human contributor made a significant and non-trivial contribution to conception. The traditional approach treated AI involvement as raising a question similar to whether another “person-like” entity contributed to the invention. At the same time, long-standing case law made clear that only natural persons can be inventors and that inventorship hinges on the traditional conception standard. That is, an inventor must form in their own mind a definite and permanent idea of the complete invention. Conception required knowledge of all claim limitations and the ability to articulate the invention with particularity. AI could assist like any other tool but could not itself be named as an inventor.
Under the new USPTO proposal, the prior 2024 guidance is replaced with a unified rule: The same inventorship standard applies to all inventions, whether or not AI was used. There is no alternative test for AI-assisted inventions.
The central question is always whether a human inventor conceived the claimed invention under the traditional conception framework. AI systems are treated as tools, similar to lab equipment, software, or databases. When a single human develops an invention with AI assistance, the only issue is whether that human formed the complete mental conception of the invention. When multiple people contribute, normal joint-inventorship rules apply, but only among the humans. AI is never considered a co-inventor. The use of AI does not change the inventorship analysis, and applications listing AI as an inventor must be rejected.
The proposal also clarifies that this inventorship framework applies equally to design patents. Because design patents use the same inventorship standard as utility patents, the key inquiry remains whether a human conceived the design itself, even if AI tools aided in generating images or variations. For plant patents, inventorship requires that the human inventor not only appreciate the new plant variety but also contribute to its creation. This standard continues to apply even when AI tools assist in designing, predicting, or selecting plant traits.
Finally, the new guidance establishes rules for priority and benefit claims. Any U.S. application or patent claiming priority to an earlier U.S. or foreign filing must share at least one human inventor in common with the earlier application. A priority claim cannot rely on a foreign filing that names only an AI system as an inventor, because such an application lacks any natural person who could serve as the required common inventor. If a foreign application names both humans and AI systems, the U.S. application must list only the human inventors when making the priority claim. The same rule applies when an international application entering the U.S. national stage lists AI as a purported inventor: The applicant must correct the record by naming only the humans who contributed to conception.
