On December 5, 2025, Dr. Stephen Thaler filed a Notice of Appeal to the Federal Court of Canada, challenging a decision that an artificial intelligence (“AI”) machine cannot be named as an inventor under Canadian patent law. This appeal brings Canada one step closer to a definitive answer to a crucial question: can an AI machine or system be named as an inventor in a Canadian patent application? Dr. Thaler developed an AI system known as DABUS (Device for Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience). DABUS was named the only inventor on patent applications filed in multiple jurisdictions, including Canada. These applications were deliberately filed as test cases to determine whether an AI system can be named as an inventor under existing patent laws. The Canadian application at issue originated from a Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) application filed on September 17, 2019, which entered the national phase in Canada as Canadian Patent Application No. 3,137,161 (the “DABUS application”).
Author:
Dr. Sean X. Zhang, Partner
szhang@dalelessmann.com