Artificial Intelligence (AI) is being seen as the "secret ingredient" to a multitude of difficult technical problems. In a specific example where AI has been successfully applied to a solution, Ravin AI has developed a product which allows fleet managers to track their vehicles and to determine if any have been damaged. This has a variety of economic benefits. Notably, the company has managed to obtain patent protection for their product in Europe. It is claimed that this is the first patent for drive-by visual inspection.

The EPO has published its decision setting out the reasons for its recent refusal of two European patent applications in which an AI system was designated as the inventor. Filed by an individual in autumn 2018, the applications EP 18 275 163 and EP 18 275 174 were refused by the EPO following oral proceedings with the applicant in November 2019, on the grounds that they do not meet the legal requirement of the European Patent Convention (EPC) that an inventor designated in the application has to be a human being, and not a machine. In both applications a machine called "DABUS", which is described as "a type of connectionist artificial intelligence", is named as the inventor. The applicant stated that he had acquired the right to the European patent from the inventor by being its successor in title, arguing that as the machine's owner, he was assigned any intellectual property rights created by this machine. In its decisions, the EPO considered that the interpretation of the legal framework of the European patent system leads to the conclusion that the inventor designated in a European patent must be a natural person.