When AI designs a drug, who gets the credit?
When AI designs a drug, who gets the credit?
摘要: Biotechnology and health
When AI designs a drug, who gets the credit?
Patents can only name humans as inventors. For now.
Antonio Regalado
正文
Biotechnology and health
When AI designs a drug, who gets the credit?
Patents can only name humans as inventors. For now.
Antonio Regalado
archive page
August 21, 2026
Stephanie Arnett/MIT Technology Review | rawpixel
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
When the biotech company Insilico Medicine used its computer models to propose a promising drug for pulmonary fibrosis, it enthusiastically claimed in a press release that the molecule had been “discovered by” its generative AI platform.
Insilico leads a pack of companies using AI to rapidly come up with drug ideas humans might never think of, potentially speeding the race to new cures. AI models are now able to generate atomic designs for drugs almost as easily as ChatGPT can write a thank-you note.
However, when it came time to file for an all-important patent to protect that new chemical structure, the company made no mention of AI. Instead the patent names five humans, including CEO Alex Zhavoronkov, as the drug’s “inventors.”
The discrepancy points to a fascinating wrinkle in intellectual-property law. No matter how fundamental an AI is to a discovery, when it comes to winning rights to an invention, it’s humans—and only humans—who can take the credit.
US courts reached that conclusion after
Ryan Abbott
, a partner at the LA law firm Brown, Neri, Smith & Khan, brought a pro bono test case naming an AI called DABUS as an inventor of a better food container, whose intricate geometric surface lets it transfer heat well and stack easily. Because no human contributed to the design, Abbott argued that the AI should be named the inventor.
The case might have raised philosophical questions, like whether AIs deserve legal rights or what the true nature is of that eureka moment that leads to a better mousetrap. But in 2022, an appeals court in Washington, DC, said these “metaphysical matters” were beside the point. Instead,
it noted
that US statutes describe an inventor as an “individual,” the plain meaning of which is