Can an AI hold a patent for new inventions? Not according to the EU Patent Office

The European Union's Patent Office has issued a new ruling rejecting two patent applications submitted on the behalf of artificial intelligence programs. The two inventions were created as part of a multidisciplinary research project organized at the University of Surrey in the United Kingdom. The researchers used an artificial intelligence called DABUS, or'device for the autonomous bootstrapping of unified sentience.' The European Union's Patent Office has rejected two patent applications submitted on behalf of an AI, saying patents can only be granted to human inventors DABUS created two unique, usable ideas that were submitted to patent office: the first was a new kind of beverage contained; and the second was a signal device to help search and rescue teams locate a target. According to a report in TechDirt, the EU's Patent Office rejected both applications'on the grounds that they do not meet the requirement of the EPC that an inventor designated in the application has to be a human being, not a machine.'