The debate on artificial intelligence and intellectual property is in the limelight thanks to the recent news from jurisdictions such as Australia and South Africa concerning Stephen Thaler’s patent application for an AI-generated invention. Thaler invented the AI machine known as ‘Device for Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience’ (DABUS) to generate inventions. He was featured in Managing IP’s Top 50 most influential people in IP 2020.
With the support of technology law scholar Ryan Abbott and IP firms, Thaler has filed international and national patent applications which mentioned DABUS as an inventor. His applications indeed challenge the orthodox practice or expectation that only humans can be named as inventors in a patent application.
Some patent offices have looked at Thaler's application. This article summarises the latest news about the applications and the firms involved, according to the information published by Abbott on LinkedIn and the Artificial Inventor Project website. We intend to update this article as soon as we receive new information. Read more