On July 28, the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission of South Africa granted the world's first patent on an invention created by an artificial intelligence ("AI") inventor. This development marks an important milestone in what will certainly be a significant battle for legal recognition of such inventions in the United States and other countries.
"Device for Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience" aka "DABUS" is an AI developed by Missouri physicist Stephen Thaler. The recently-issued patent is directed to a food container based on fractal geometry. The patent application was filed on September 17, 2019 under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (1) Under the heading of "inventor", the application identifies DABUS and states "The invention was autonomously generated by an artificial intelligence." (2) Continue Reading