Proceeding of 2025 8th International Conference on Humanities Education and Social Sciences (ICHESS 2025)

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Artificial Intelligence and Patent Ownership: Determining Inventorship Through the Prism of Human Inventive Contribution

――An Analogy from the Feist Doctrine of Copyright Law

Authors
Zhichao Wang1, *
1University of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, China
*Corresponding author. Email: xwxwyyds@gmail.com
Corresponding Author
Zhichao Wang
Available Online 26 March 2026.
DOI
10.2991/978-2-38476-551-5_60How to use a DOI?
Keywords
Artificial Intelligence; Patent Law; Ownership; Copyright Law
Abstract

This paper contends that an AI-assisted invention should be eligible for patent protection only if the human inventor has provided a dominant, indispensable, and inventive contribution to the conception of said invention. The principle of “hard work” has been clarified in the case of Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co., which means that the results created by merely manipulating artificial intelligence without investing in intellectual creation cannot be patentable. Judicial decisions in patent law, such as Thaler v. Director of the UK Patent Office, have exposed the legal limitations of patent law without a corresponding examination framework. Therefore, this paper aims to construct a legal standard that can assess the contribution of human creativity. That is, a patent law standard that can exclude pure artificial intelligence production and only protect human creative input. In today’s era of extremely rapid technological development, this legal standard plays an important role in stimulating genuine human invention and creation.

Copyright
© 2026 The Author(s)
Open Access
Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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Volume Title
Proceeding of 2025 8th International Conference on Humanities Education and Social Sciences (ICHESS 2025)
Series
Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research
Publication Date
26 March 2026
ISBN
978-2-38476-551-5
ISSN
2352-5398
DOI
10.2991/978-2-38476-551-5_60How to use a DOI?
Copyright
© 2026 The Author(s)
Open Access
Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

Cite this article

risenwbib
TY  - CONF
AU  - Zhichao Wang
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/03/26
TI  - Artificial Intelligence and Patent Ownership: Determining Inventorship Through the Prism of Human Inventive Contribution
BT  - Proceeding of 2025 8th International Conference on Humanities Education and Social Sciences (ICHESS 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 561
EP  - 569
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-551-5_60
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-551-5_60
ID  - Wang2026
ER  -