If machines can be inventors, could AI soon monopolise technology?

What does it mean to be an inventor? In patent law, designed to protect the intellectual property of inventors, officials are used to thinking of inventors as humans, taking an "inventive step" – a new way of doing something -- not obvious to a person skilled in the same art. But last week -- in a judicial world first -- Australia's Federal Court ruled an artificial intelligence (AI) system can be named as an inventor. That judgement overturned a decision by the nation's Commissioner of Patents that meant US scientist Stephen Thaler could not patent inventions by his AI system, DABUS (Device for Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience). Thaler says DABUS independently designed a fractal-shaped container for improved grip and heat transfer, and an emergency beacon that flashes more noticeably.