Dr. Stephen L. Thaler (DABUS): Indian Patent Application No. 202017019068

DABUS is an artificial-intelligence system built by the American scientist Stephen L. Thaler. Thaler has filed patent applications around the world naming DABUS, and not himself, as the inventor, in order to test whether patent law can recognise a machine as an inventor. The applications are titled "Food container" and "Devices and Methods for Attracting Enhanced Attention".⁴⁷

The results abroad have been largely negative. According to Wikipedia's summary of the litigation, the European Patent Office rejected the applications and its Board of Appeal dismissed the appeal on 21 December 2021. The UK Supreme Court dismissed Thaler's appeal on 20 December 2023, the US Federal Circuit affirmed the refusal on 5 August 2022, and the Full Federal Court of Australia reversed a favourable first-instance ruling on 13 April 2022. South Africa's companies and intellectual property office accepted the application in 2021, but it has no substantive examination. Germany and Switzerland allowed patents after amendments naming Thaler as inventor with DABUS described as a tool.⁷⁴

In India the question has an extra dimension, because a parliamentary standing committee report published on 23 July 2021 recommended reviewing the Patents Act and the Copyright Act to take account of AI and AI-related inventions.⁸ Thaler later relied on the 161st Rajya Sabha committee report in the Indian proceedings.⁴

Thaler's Indian filing is Patent Application No. 202017019068, the national-phase entry of a single PCT application filed in 2019, followed by national filings in about 18 jurisdictions.¹⁴ The application names Dr. Thaler as applicant and DABUS as sole inventor. The invention is a food container with inner and outer fractal profiles that eases holding and allows stacking, titled "food container and devices and methods for attracting enhanced attention".⁴

The application was decided by an Assistant Controller of Patents and Designs by an order dated 15 April 2026. The decision itself was not available for this entry, so earlier steps such as any examination report or hearing are not recorded here. The account that follows relies on the order as described in Delhi High Court records and on the SpicyIP analysis of April 2026.¹⁴

The order refused the application on two independent grounds, one concerning inventorship and one concerning the merits of the invention.¹⁴

Inventorship. The Assistant Controller accepted the objection that a non-human AI entity cannot be the "true and first inventor" under Sections 2, 6, 7 and 10 of the Patents Act. The reasoning, as described by SpicyIP, runs as follows:⁴

• A natural person must be able to hold and assign legal rights and be represented after death.
• Proof of right under Section 7 needs particulars such as nationality, address and signature, or a valid assignment, and owning the machine is not enough.
• Legal personhood carries responsibility and intent, which machines lack.
• Reliance on PCT Rule 4.17(ii), under which an applicant may state the basis of its right to apply, does not satisfy Indian law, because Section 138(4) makes formal proof of right mandatory for PCT applications.

Thaler argued that, as the person who made, used and maintained DABUS, he could claim title to its inventions. SpicyIP reports that the office accepted the Australian court's rejection of that accession argument. He also relied on the 161st Rajya Sabha committee report, which questioned human-only inventorship. The Assistant Controller separated that policy recommendation from the statutory law.⁴

Inventive step. The order also examined the invention. It held that prior art with complementary concave and convex surfaces, grooves and flanges would lead a person skilled in the art to the claimed fractal geometry as a routine design choice, and that Thaler gave no experimental data showing an unexpected advantage. Claim 1 was therefore refused under Section 2(1)(ja), and dependent claims 2 to 9 fell with it. SpicyIP and its weekly review both note that India went further than a mere inventorship refusal by testing the merits.⁴⁵

SpicyIP's Ambika Aggarwal welcomed the clarity on inventorship but questioned part of the reasoning. She noted that the Controller said that "the conception of invention should also originate from a human mind". She argued that this may conflict with AI-assisted invention practice and suggested that it forecloses room for AI-assisted inventions, unlike the German and Swiss approach of naming the human as inventor and describing the AI as a tool. She pointed to the documented use of tools such as AlphaFold in pharmaceutical patent applications. She also criticised the 161st Rajya Sabha report's policy recommendations as "baseless and unsubstantiated", and said the 169th report is more nuanced on copyright but remains vague on patents.⁴

The decision is also relevant to the AI-authorship questions in copyright. The Copyright Office's order of 31 August 2026 on the same applicant's DABUS artwork reached a parallel conclusion that DABUS cannot be an author, while treating Thaler as the person who caused the work to be created.

Thaler appealed under Section 117A of the Patents Act, read with Rule 6 of the Delhi High Court Intellectual Property Rights Division Rules, 2022. The appeal, C.A.(COMM.IPD-PAT) 36/2026, seeks to set aside the impugned order of 15 April 2026 refusing grant on Indian Patent Application No. 202017019068. It is before Justice Jyoti Singh.¹ Bar & Bench reported that Thaler contends Indian patent law does not require an inventor to be a natural person.⁶

On 16 July 2026 the order was merely a listing because lawyers were abstaining from work. On 30 July 2026 the court issued notice, the Patent Office accepted notice through counsel and was given six weeks to reply, and the court took on record a detailed synopsis and list of dates. Thaler was represented by Ankit Sahni, Kritika Sahni, Chirag Ahluwalia and Aman Sinha, and the Patent Office by Gaurav Barathi, SPC, and others.¹² Ankit Sahni is also the applicant for the Indian copyright registration of the Suryast artwork, which names an AI tool as co-author.

On 18 September 2026 the court granted Thaler four weeks from that date, that is until about 16 October 2026, to file a rejoinder, and listed the appeal on 19 January 2027.³

The refusal places India with the majority of jurisdictions that insist on a human inventor. It is not, however, a pure inventorship decision. By also examining inventive step, the Assistant Controller made clear that an AI-related application cannot rely on its status as a test case to avoid examination on the merits, and both SpicyIP pieces draw attention to this step.⁴⁵

The decision leaves several matters for the appeal. One is whether Section 6 and Section 7, which speak of a "person" with a right to apply, can be read to include non-natural persons, as Thaler argues. Another is whether a human who directs or recognises an AI's output can be named as inventor, as in Germany and Switzerland, and how that interacts with the "human mind" remark. A third is how the Patent Office should treat applications that disclose AI assistance, which matters for the many AI-assisted inventions that do not involve a claim of autonomous inventorship. The patent-eligibility side is addressed in the entry on Ferid Allani v. Union of India.

The refusal of 15 April 2026 stands unless the Delhi High Court sets it aside. The appeal is pending, with the Patent Office's reply due after the notice of 30 July 2026, the rejoinder due in October 2026 and the next hearing on 19 January 2027.²³ As of 15 October 2026, no judgment on the appeal has been delivered.