Insilico Medicine listed five humans as inventors on AI-proposed fibrosis drug patent

Insilico Medicine's 2023 patent application for ISM001-055 omitted any reference to AI despite earlier press releases stating the molecule was discovered by its generative platform. The USPTO listed Alex Zhavoronkov and four colleagues as inventors. This follows the 2022 Federal Circuit ruling in Thaler v. Vidal that only natural persons qualify as inventors under 35 U.S.C. § 100(f).

The DABUS test cases established that machine-generated outputs require human contribution for patentability. USPTO guidance issued in 2024 under the prior administration required disclosure of AI tools when humans performed significant inventive acts; the current administration rescinded that requirement, treating AI as equivalent to a calculator. No public data shows how many AI-assisted applications have been granted since the reversal.

Abbott has argued that listing only humans on AI-heavy filings creates invalidity risk under 35 U.S.C. § 102(f). Companies continue to file while maintaining minimal human oversight to satisfy the "individual" requirement. Environmental claims about reduced lab screening have not been quantified in peer-reviewed trial data.

Future challenges will likely target whether listed inventors made sufficient contributions once generative models require only prompt engineering. The USPTO has not published rejection statistics tied to AI disclosure since the policy shift.