The US system does prevent math from being claimed. Others have tried to explain the inherent math nature by making products with function languages of varying purity. These claims fell on deft ears.
tl;dr: Abstract "existence", as numbers have, is not the same thing legally or practically as concrete "existence", as files have.
I don't think this is intended to actually create prior art that could be used in a patent dispute, but as an art project it's well-executed.
To prevent patents like this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immersion_v._Sony
"Provided is a system and program for automatically handling an error when retrieving a file for an application. The structure comprises a seat element which has a top surface, designed to at least partly contact a user, and a support element underlying the seat element and designed to be connected to the movable or stationary frame."
http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2011/10/04/prior-art-america-inven...
http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2013/09/11/a-simple-guide-to-the-a...
"Under the U.S. first to file system the inventor will still have a personal grace-period, which is not available to inventors outside the U.S. in many countries that follow a more traditional formulation of the first to file rule. This personal grace-period says that the inventor’s own disclosures, or the disclosures of others who have derived from the inventor, are not used as prior art as long as they occurred within 12 months of the filing date of a patent application relating to the invention. However, and this is a very big however, disclosures of third-parties who independently arrived at the invention information will be used against the inventor unless the disclosure is of the same subject matter. Said another way, there is virtually no chance that a grace-period will exist relative to third party, independently created disclosures."
Prior art indeed does invalidate the ability to patent something, unless the prior art was yours, and you patented said art within 12 months of its disclosure.
Not hard to game that at all. I'm sure business ethics will prevail though.
See https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140929/08500728662/new-c..., https://torrentfreak.com/copyright-apocalypse-trolls-attack-....
Sadly it appears to have died but can still be viewed at https://web.archive.org/web/20150109080014/http://www.qentis... and https://archive.is/w6wLc
Edit: That said, we do need to fix the patent system. The problem, right now, is human: there needs to be political will, effected by people, to persuade Congress to change the laws. An algorithm does not do that.
Although it's possible this thing is a joke, in which case, well played.
That said, with a bit of guideance such as learning/ feedback and/or being routed around an initial framework (perhaps TRIZ or similar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIZ), there could be a much higher signal-to-noise ratio. I've seen other attempts at invention through AI or algorithm - as dmritard says, the key to useful invention isn't generation, its filtering the noise.
Although as others have said, I doubt this would be admissable in court. Randomly generated 'claims' remain random: one could say in an infinite, random universe, surely every invention has already been created simply by matter composing itself in the approprieate way.
That's exactly my thought on it after reading a couple.
Consider the case of chemistry: One could write an application that goes through known chemical compounds[1] and then generates a combination of all of them, and for each combination, adds a ".. for use as a food additive", ".. for treatment of <medical condition>" ".. for general purpose cleaner" ".. for use in a battery" etc.
Without doubt, within that crazy-huge list, there would be some absolutely correct claims, just as one of the infinite monkeys did in fact write Shakespeare: but which one?
This site really isn't any different.
[1] For example, harvest everything on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Chemistry-related_lis...
edit: so apparently this guy is an 'artist' so maybe this isn't meant to be taken seriously. Perhaps its just a commentary on the absurdity of the patent system. If that's the goal, then cool, I think he's made a point.
Now to look for it… https://github.com/fenollp/minepi/blob/master/README.md
