Cite as 558 F.Supp.3d 238 (E.D.Va. 2021)
mad, 566 U.S. at 455, 132 S.Ct. 1702 (emphasis in original).
Congress’s use of the term “individual” in the Patent Act strengthens the conclusion that an “inventor” must be a natural person. Congress provided that in executing the oath or declaration accompanying a patent application, the inventor must include a statement that “such individual believes himself or herself to be the original inventor or an original joint inventor of a claimed invention in the application.” 35 U.S.C. § 115(b)(2) (emphasis added). The Supreme Court has recognized the principle that “a word is known by the company it keeps (the doctrine of noscitur a sociis)” and that this principle is a “rule we rely upon to avoid ascribing to one word a meaning so broad that it is inconsistent with its accompanying words, thus giving ‘unintended breadth to the Acts of Congress.’ ” Gustafson v. Alloyd Co., 513 U.S. 561, 575; 115 S.Ct. 1061, 131 L.Ed.2d 1 (1995) (quoting Jarecki v. G.D. Searle & Co., 367 U.S. 303, 307, 81 S.Ct. 1579, 6 L.Ed.2d 859 (1961)). By using personal pronouns such as “himself or herself” and the verb “believes” in adjacent terms modifying “individual,” Congress was clearly referencing a natural person. Because “there is a presumption that a given term is used to mean the same thing throughout a statute,” the term “individual” is presumed to have a consistent meaning throughout the Patent Act. Mohamad, 566 U.S. at 456, 132 S.Ct. 1702. As the USPTO correctly observes, plaintiff relies on no statutory text within the Patent Act to support his argument that Congress intended to deviate from the typical use of “individual” as meaning a natural person. Instead, plaintiff argues that “[e]ven if statutory and judicial language refers to inventors as individuals, none of this has been in the context of AI-[g]enerated [i]nventions.” [Dkt. No. 19] at 17. That argument does not undercut that the ordinary meaning of the word “individual,” fortified by its statutory context, refers to natural persons, which necessarily excludes artificial intelligence machines.
This conclusion is further buttressed by the Federal Circuit’s consistent holdings that under current patent law “inventors must be natural persons.” Max-Planck, 734 F.3d at 1323; see also Beech Aircraft, 990 F.2d at 1248. In Max-Planck, the Federal Circuit evaluated whether a state was the real party in interest where a state university sued officials of another state university (but not the university itself) to correct inventorship of a patent. In holding that “a State has no core sovereign interest in inventorship,” the Federal Circuit stated that “[i]t is axiomatic that inventors are the individuals that conceive of the invention: [c]onception is the touchstone of inventorship,” and that “[t]o perform this mental act [of conception], inventors must be natural persons and cannot be corporations or sovereigns.” 734 F.3d at 1323. In Beech Aircraft, the Federal Circuit stated that a corporation “could never have been declared an ‘inventor,’ as [the corporation] was merely a corporate assignee and only natural persons can be ‘inventors.’ ” 990 F.2d at 1248 (citing 35 U.S.C. §§ 115–118). Although these cases did not squarely address the issue raised in this civil action, the unequivocal statements from the Federal Circuit that “inventors must be natural persons” and “only natural persons can be ‘inventors’ ” support the plain meaning of “individual” in the Patent Act as referring only to a natural person and not to an artificial intelligence machine. Max-Planck, 734 F.3d at 1323; Beech Aircraft, 990 F.2d at 1248.
Having neither facts nor law to support his argument, plaintiff’s main argument is that policy considerations and the general purpose of the Constitution’s
