referred to as Dabus (Device for the Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience). The challenge has been to determine who should be cited as the inventor (Dabus or its creator) and who owns the invention. Most patent offices have decided that AI systems cannot be cited as inventors. In South Africa, as there is no examination, as discussed above, the patent application filed here proceeded to grant as South African patent no 2021/03242. It remains to be seen what our courts would hold if this patent was ever challenged or an attempt is made to enforce the granted patent. It is likely, in our view, that the courts would find Dabus was incorrectly cited. A similar question arises as to who Patents Act and its regulations are amended to allow for the legislative framework to introduce SSE. The draft of the amendments has not yet been published for public comment, and we do not have any indication as to when the draft will be published. Furthermore, the process of passing a bill, and signing it into law by the South African president, is a lengthy process. However, change is certainly in the air! Another interesting area of change of course relates to the rapid development of AI and its impact on practising patent law. One example of this has already occurred where a patent application was filed in a number of countries around the world for an invention autonomously generated by an artificial intelligence, 74 LAWYER MONTHLY JUNE 2023 Most patent offices have decided that AI systems cannot be cited as inventors.
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