AI As Inventor Article

Recently, South Africa obtained notoriety in its patent office being the first in the world to grant a patent in which an artificial intelligence (AI) is identified as the inventor (the South African Patent).

As is widely known, the South African patent office does not examine patent applications substantively.  Patent applications are only examined for compliance with formality requirements.

The South African Patent is derived from an International PCT application and is the South African PCT national phase of the earlier International PCT application. As has been reported, it appears that, in examining the formal aspects of the application for the South African Patent, the Registrar was precluded both by international treaty and by earlier patent office directives, from requesting any documentary evidence of the identity of the inventor or of the chain of transfer of the entitlement to apply.  Thus, the Registrar had to accept the application as