Can AI really help with patent drafting and filing?

Yes, as a tool a human inventor and attorney use, not as an independent filer. The USPTO's revised inventorship guidance, issued November 28, 2025, reaffirms the Federal Circuit's ruling in Thaler v. Vidal that only a natural person can be named as an inventor, and treats AI systems the way it treats lab equipment or research databases: tools a human uses, not co-inventors.

In practice, AI genuinely speeds up drafting first-pass claims and specifications, prior art search, and consistency checks across large portfolios. What it can't do is replace the attorney: every claim still needs a registered patent professional's review before filing, both because the USPTO requires it and because claim scope is a legal judgment call, not a pattern-matching one.

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