AI as Inventor: DABUS in Korea Compared with the US, EU, and Beyond

Can an AI 'make' an invention, and if so, can it be listed as an inventor on a patent application? The question is no longer hypothetical. Stephen Thaler's PCT filings naming his AI DABUS (Device for the Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience) as the sole inventor entered 16 jurisdictions, forcing patent offices and courts to take a position.

Korea, as set out in the KIPO press release, refused the application at KIPO, was affirmed by the Seoul Administrative Court, and was affirmed again by the Seoul High Court — with the appeal now pending at the Korean Supreme Court. This article compares the Korean and overseas outcomes side by side and translates them into practical guidance for AI-assisted inventions filed in Korea.

The DABUS Project: Two Inventions, 16 Countries

DABUS is the AI system that, by Thaler's account, autonomously generated two inventions: a food container based on fractal geometry that enables rapid reheating, and a flashing beacon for emergency attention. With Thaler as applicant and DABUS as the sole named inventor, parallel filings entered Korea, the US, EPO, UK, Australia, South Africa, Japan, Germany, New Zealand, Taiwan, India and Israel, among others.

The dispute is procedural rather than substantive: not whether the food container is novel, but whether a non-human system can occupy the inventor field. Because patent offices answered before substantive examination, the DABUS dossier became a clean comparative sample for inventorship doctrine.

Korea: Two Levels, Same Result

KIPO held the position that an inventor must be a natural person and refused the DABUS filing for a defective inventor designation. The Seoul Administrative Court affirmed on June 30, 2023, and the Seoul High Court affirmed again on May 16, 2024, leaving the natural-person doctrine intact.

The reasoning rests on Patent Act article 33(1): the right to obtain a patent vests in 'a person who has made an invention, or that person's successor.' Korean practice treats 'person' as natural person — applicants can be legal entities, but inventors cannot. The Administrative and High Courts have now codified that reading.

The Patent Act vests the right to a patent in the 'person' who made the invention, or that person's successor. AI cannot be the subject of rights and duties and therefore cannot be an inventor.

Cross-Border Comparison at a Glance

Almost every jurisdiction with substantive examination converged on the same answer: AI cannot be named as an inventor. The frequently cited 'exception' — South Africa — sits outside that pattern because its registration system does not include substantive examination, so the inventor field passes through without review.

United States: Significant-Contribution Test

The USPTO read 'individual' in 35 U.S.C. §§ 100 and 115 as natural person and refused DABUS. The Federal Circuit affirmed in Thaler v. Vidal in August 2022. The USPTO followed up with 2024 AI inventorship guidance anchoring the rule in a 'significant contribution' test: a natural person must have contributed meaningfully to the invention, evaluated case by case. AI-only inventorship is foreclosed; mixed contribution is fact-specific.

EPO and UK: Same Conclusion

The EPO refused the DABUS application in January 2020, and the Board of Appeal dismissed Thaler's appeal in December 2021. EPC article 81 and the Implementing Regulations require a natural person's name and address in the inventor designation, which an AI system cannot satisfy. The UK followed suit through EWHC, EWCA and the Supreme Court — leaving Korea, the US, the EU and the UK on the same line.

Australia: A Brief Reversal, Then Realignment

Australia briefly stood out when a first-instance Federal Court decision suggested DABUS could qualify, but the Full Federal Court reversed and the High Court denied special leave on November 11, 2022. The Australian outcome is now settled in line with the rest: an inventor must be a natural person.

South Africa: A Procedural Outlier

South Africa's CIPC registered the DABUS application in 2021. This is not because South African law endorses AI inventors substantively — it is because the country runs a registration system without statutory definition of inventor or substantive examination. Once formal requirements are met, the application proceeds. The DABUS South African registration is best understood as registration without merits review, not endorsement of AI inventorship.

What Korea's Doctrine Means for Practice

The Korean Patent Act does not expressly define 'inventor', but article 33 and adjacent provisions speak of 'a person who made the invention', and application forms presuppose natural-person identifiers. Two levels of court have now confirmed that systemic reading. For applicants, the consequence is operational rather than doctrinal: AI cannot occupy the inventor field, full stop.

• Statutory text: 'a person who made the invention' (Patent Act art. 33)
• General civil-law principle restricting legal personhood to natural persons and legal entities
• Personal rights attached to inventorship (e.g., right to be named) presuppose a natural person
• Filing forms request natural-person identifiers (resident registration, date of birth)
• International convergence — major systems uniformly limit inventorship to natural persons

Filing Practice for AI-Assisted Inventions

Treat AI as a tool. The inventor field must list the natural persons who made a meaningful contribution to the inventive concept. The interesting question is no longer whether AI can be named, but how to document and allocate human contribution when AI is in the loop. The practical playbook below works for Korean filings and aligns with the USPTO's 2024 guidance for parallel US prosecution.

1. Identify natural-person inventors — list every person who made a significant contribution to the AI-assisted output
2. Keep contribution records — prompts, dataset choices, evaluation and selection of AI outputs all reflect human judgment
3. Hold an inventorship meeting — document each contributor's role under co-inventorship standards
4. Disclose AI use — describe AI tools used in the specification, accurately rather than concealing them
5. Sync with US/EU filings — align the inventor list with USPTO 'significant contribution' standards for cross-border consistency

Frequently Asked Questions

Q1. Who do we name when an invention came out of AI used by a corporate team?

Name the natural persons who used AI as a tool to complete the invention — typically the researchers and engineers who set the problem, designed the prompts or datasets, and evaluated the output. If more than one person contributed meaningfully, all of them belong on the inventor list under co-inventorship rules. Routine assistance such as data tidying or test execution generally does not qualify. The applicant field can still be the corporate entity.

Q2. Should we disclose that AI was used?

If the AI played a meaningful role in deriving the invention, it is safer to describe its use accurately in the specification. AI use does not by itself defeat patentability, and a clear narrative of which step of the work the human inventors did at which stage can pre-empt later inventorship challenges. It also helps US filings conform to the 2024 USPTO guidance on AI-assisted inventions.

Q3. Will Korea reverse the natural-person rule any time soon?

Unlikely in the short term. Two levels of Korean court have aligned with the US, EU, UK and Australia, and Korea has no incentive to break ranks alone. KIPO has run a public survey and is updating examination guidance, so a future statutory clarification (defining inventor, mandating AI-use disclosure) is plausible — but for now, the safe baseline remains natural-person inventors plus contribution records.