USPTO's Revised Inventorship Guidance for AI-Assisted Inventions

USPTO Director Squires continues his focus on AI at the USPTO. Today, he rescinded the 2024 USPTO guidance on determining inventorship for AI-assisted inventions and released new guidance. Today's guidance reinforces that AI cannot be named as an inventor - only natural persons can be inventors. Viewing AI as a tool used by a natural person, the guidance states that "AI systems[] may provide services and generate ideas, but they remain tools used by the human inventor who conceived the claimed invention. When one natural person is involved in creating an invention with the assistance of AI, the inquiry is whether that person conceived the invention under the traditional conception standard."