In November 2025, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office replaced its 2024 guidance on AI-assisted inventions. The revised guidance applies no special inventorship test when AI is involved: the traditional standard of human conception governs every application.
What changed.
On November 28, 2025, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office published "Revised Inventorship Guidance for AI-Assisted Inventions" (90 Fed. Reg. 54,636), rescinding its February 2024 guidance in its entirety. The 2024 framework had layered a multi-factor analysis (drawn from the Federal Circuit's Pannu decision on joint inventorship) onto the question of whether a human qualified as an inventor when AI contributed to the work. The revised guidance drops that overlay: the Pannu factors now apply only to joint inventorship disputes among multiple natural persons, not to whether AI assistance defeats inventorship.
A single standard now applies. If a natural person conceived the invention, that person is an inventor, regardless of which tools, including AI systems, assisted along the way.
The standard.
Inventorship has always turned on conception: the formation in the mind of the inventor of a definite and permanent idea of the complete invention, as the Federal Circuit described it in Hybritech Inc. v. Monoclonal Antibodies, Inc., 802 F.2d 1367, 1376 (Fed. Cir. 1986). The revised guidance treats AI systems as instruments (analogous to laboratory equipment, software, or research databases) rather than as contributors whose involvement needs separate analysis. An AI system cannot be named as an inventor: the Federal Circuit held in Thaler v. Vidal, 43 F.4th 1207 (Fed. Cir. 2022), that the Patent Act's use of the term "inventor" refers only to natural persons, and the USPTO presumes the natural persons named in an application are correct.
The guidance applies across utility, design, and plant patents. The guidance also notes that foreign priority applications naming an AI system as the sole inventor will not be accepted for priority claims.
What it means for Texas R&D teams.
For companies that use AI in research and development, the practical focus is documentation. The guidance does not change what counts as inventorship, but it places the whole inquiry on the human contribution. Lab notebooks, design documents, and conception records that identify the human ideas behind AI-assisted work are the kind of evidence that supports inventorship. Where an AI system generates a candidate and a researcher recognizes, selects, and develops it into a definite invention, a record of that researcher's contribution is useful.
Under the guidance, AI systems cannot be named as inventors, and substantial AI involvement does not by itself defeat inventorship if a natural person conceived the claimed invention. Other countries may treat AI-assisted inventorship differently, which matters for applications that will also be filed abroad.
What to watch.
Whether the Federal Circuit addresses AI-assisted inventorship under the revised framework; whether foreign offices converge with the U.S. natural-person rule; and how examiners apply the guidance to applications where the human contribution sits at the boundary between conceiving and merely prompting.
Sources.
- USPTO, "Revised Inventorship Guidance for AI-Assisted Inventions," 90 Fed. Reg. 54,636 (Nov. 28, 2025) (Docket No. PTO-P-2025-0014; Fed. Reg. Doc. 2025-21457), rescinding 89 Fed. Reg. 10043 (Feb. 13, 2024). federalregister.gov/d/2025-21457 (retrieved September 30, 2026).
- USPTO Subscription Center notice, "Revised Inventorship Guidance for AI-Assisted Inventions" (2025). uspto.gov (retrieved September 30, 2026).
- Thaler v. Vidal, 43 F.4th 1207 (Fed. Cir. 2022) (only natural persons can be inventors under the Patent Act). cases.justia.com (retrieved September 30, 2026).
- Hybritech Inc. v. Monoclonal Antibodies, Inc., 802 F.2d 1367, 1376 (Fed. Cir. 1986) (conception as "a definite and permanent idea of the complete invention"). law.justia.com (retrieved September 30, 2026).
- Corroborating analysis: "Revised USPTO guidance on inventorship for AI-assisted inventions: a pro-innovation pivot away from Pannu factors," Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice (Oxford Academic). academic.oup.com (retrieved September 30, 2026).
This article is general information, not legal advice. Law checked through September 30, 2026. See the Disclaimer.