The European Patent Office (EPO) has rejected two patent applications in which artificial intelligence (AI) was designated as the inventor. EP 18 275 163 and EP 18 275 174, described as a food container based on advanced geometry and light-based "devices and methods for attracting enhanced attention" in rescue scenarios, are patents submitted to the office and signed off with an inventor called DABUS. Created by Stephen Thaler, chief executive of Imagination Engines, DABUS is described as an AI made up of a "swarm of many disconnected neural nets, each containing interrelated memories, perhaps of a linguistic, visual, or auditory nature." These "nets" continually combine and detach, leading to the generation of complex concepts -- such as the ideas described in the patent applications. The applications were submitted last August in the UK, US, and Europe by the Artificial Inventor project team, led by Professor Ryan Abbott from the UK's University of Surrey. Current rules dictate that humans must be attributed as inventors behind a patent application in order to prevent full corporate inventorship from becoming a recognized practice for ideas.