Published: 01:24 AM, 14 September 2026
Bangladesh’s Patent Law Has Never Asked Whether AI Can Be Considered An Inventor
Nusiba Hasan Ohee
In 2018, a dispute concerning AI in the patent field was first raised, after an English physicist named Stephen Thaler filed applications for patent for two innovations, one is for a food container with a fractal design and other for a flashing light beacon for emergency purposes (Thaler v Comptroller-General of Patents, Designs and Trademarks ). The inventions were absolutely perfect, but the dispute arose when Dr. Thaler named “DABUS”, which is an artificial intelligence invented by him, as the inventor in the patent form, instead of his name. Thaler argued that DABUS (Device for the Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience) is the real inventor, not him and thus, it deserved the right to get patent and be considered as an inventor. This dispute set off a five years legal battle in the patent office and courts across the world. Judges and other legal practitioners faced a newer problem regarding whether an inventor can be a non-human person or not. However, Bangladesh didn’t join the club and hasn’t either acknowledged the issue through its Patent Act, 2023 yet.
The landmark DABUS case was raised in a court in the United Kingdom, but it did not only stay inside one courtroom rather spread into the other countries of the world within a very short period of time. The United States, European Union, Australia, South Africa and India have been constantly turning the issue into a global test case. In 2023 the UK court of appeal and later the Supreme Court ruled that only natural human beings can be the patent holder and inventor, not any kind of machines or AI. The United States, European Union and Germany came to the same conclusion as the United Kingdom. Initially, the Australian Federal Court recognized that “inventor can be non-human”, by ruling that AI or other machinery tools can be granted as inventors. However, the decision was overruled by the full federal court stating that under the Patents Act, 1990 the inventor can be only a natural person, not AI. South Africa is the only country that recognized AI or other tools like DABUS can apply as inventors in the patent office.
India was also fighting over this issue, but in 2026, India finally came to the conclusion. The country refused to consider AI as an inventor and the Indian patent office refused the application of Dr. Stephen Thaler. They said that a person needs to be a natural or legal person under their current legal system, to obtain holding or transferring rights of the patent. Moreover the Patents Act, 1970 of India specifically mentions that an inventor should be a natural person.
Bangladesh brought its patent concerns through legal aspects in 2023 by implementing the Patents Act, 2023, when the DABUS dispute was at its peak globally. Yet, Bangladesh has never answered the question or addressed it. No policy paper was introduced to examine the concerned fact by the lawmakers, department of patents, design and trademarks or the Courts. Section 2(14) of the Act defined “Person” as a natural legal person. This conventional definition was incorporated simply because it was inherited from previous drafting conventions, not because any institution weighed the competing economic, philosophical, or doctrinal arguments and made a deliberate choice.
There is a rapid growth of AI tools and their functions in various fields. Whereas the world is trying to bring several AI factors under consideration in their laws, Bangladesh largely remains silent in cases like that. The DABUS case brought a significant outrage across the world and threw a highly concerning question towards the world. But Bangladesh didn’t bother to answer it. As locally developed AI tools shift from merely assisting human researchers to genuinely generating novel technical solutions with minimal human input, Bangladeshi inventors and their patent lawyers will eventually confront the same fork that Thaler forced onto the UK, the US, and the EU.
In our country students, academic researchers and scholars use AI for their research purposes to get assistance. They take the help of AI to run simulations, optimize an engineering design, logo creations and graphics works, and AI delivers the results with accuracy. This practice is widely recognized but what about the situations when AI innovates something? The laws cannot answer the question.
Patent law decisions are never just abstract philosophy, rather, they determine, in very concrete terms, regarding who can be the legal owner and commercialize an invention. An unresolved question regarding inventorship can leave a patent application vulnerable to rejection at filing or invalidation after years of financial and reputational loss. If any applicant in Bangladesh files an application for patent like DABUS case, the Department of Patents, Designs and Trademarks will be facing a completely new crisis without any legislative guidance, domestic precedent and settled international consensus to lean on, beyond the common observation that the most jurisdictions have refused the idea so far.
The solution does not require Bangladesh to stand in the underlying philosophical debate, only to actually address the issue before it is forced by a filing of application. A clear and precise statutory clarification and definition regarding the confirming the issue of whether a non-human can be an inventor would close the gap that other countries have spent years litigating their way through case by case. Bangladesh stands in a position of advantage as many jurisdictions have already faced the crisis and provided solutions. That opportunity, however, will not last forever, Bangladesh now needs to act before it is compelled to confront the issue itself.
Nusiba Hasan Ohee studies Law
in Bangladesh University of
Professionals (BUP), Mirpur
Cantonment, Dhaka.
