When AI designs a drug, who gets the credit?
As AI becomes increasingly capable of drug discovery, legal systems are struggling to determine who holds intellectual property rights. Current U.S. law mandates that only humans can be named as inventors on patents, effectively excluding AI from legal recognition.
Why it matters
This legal bottleneck creates a significant challenge for biotech companies relying on AI to accelerate medical innovation.
Patents can only name humans as inventors. For now.
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.”
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