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ARTICLE · 29 SEPTEMBER 2021

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DABUS: The ‘natural Person' Problem

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It was the world's first AI to invent viable products without human intervention.

GlobalIntellectual Property
Miguel Bibe
Miguel Bibe

The Device for the Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience (DABUS) case dates back to August 2019, when a team of academics from the University of Surrey in the UK filed two patent applications in the UK Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO), the European Property Office (EPO) and the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), for inventions developed by artificial intelligence (AI).

According to the applications of these patents, no human being was responsible for the development of the inventions they intended to protect, which instead were formulated by DABUS, created by AI expert Stephen Thaler. It was the world's first AI to invent viable products without human intervention.

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