Korea sets guidelines on AI-created inventions, designs and copyright

The Korea Intellectual Property Office said Thursday that a person must make a substantive contribution for an AI-assisted invention to be patented, as the government finalized a package of guidelines covering patents, designs and copyright in AI-generated works.

The guidelines were confirmed at the 42nd meeting of the National Intellectual Property Committee, chaired by private co-chairman Kye Seung-kyun. High-quality inventions that use AI as a tool will be actively protected, while indiscriminate AI-generated filings without genuine human input will face strict scrutiny.

Under the patent guidelines, AI cannot be named as an inventor. If examiners doubt a person's contribution, they may notify the applicant of a ground for rejection and request a handwritten inventor confirmation statement. Filings that submit AI output without human review will not have their inventor recognized.

Behind the patent guidelines was a surge in filings: unrepresented individual applications jumped 289 percent in the first five months of this year from a year earlier, to 19,263 from 4,954.

Separately, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism reported on three copyright guidelines covering registration, dispute prevention and fair use of generative AI. Works that use AI can be registered as copyright if human creative contribution is recognized, while AI output on its own cannot be; if a person selects and arranges such output creatively, it can be registered as a compilation work.

Disputes are judged on whether the AI result was created with awareness of existing works and whether creative expression is substantially similar. On AI training, commercial purpose or web crawling does not automatically disqualify fair use, and four factors, including the purpose of use and the type of work, are weighed together.

The design guidelines address the spread of AI in design work. AI cannot be listed as the creator on an application, but a design can be registered when a person conceives the dominant features that shape its overall aesthetic impression and uses AI as a tool to realize them.

The committee also approved a partial revision of its operating rules to reflect amendments to the intellectual property framework act and its enforcement decree, including the committee's transfer to the prime minister's office and a reorganization of its expert committees.

"AI has now become a universal tool for creation, but human creativity must remain at the center of the intellectual property system," Kye said. "The guidelines discussed today should serve as the standard for a fair intellectual property order that strongly protects legitimate creation using AI and filters out indiscriminate filings, and Korea will take a leading role in international norm discussions."

The government also plans to tighten penalties against false filings. Submitting fabricated experimental results to obtain a patent is punishable by up to three years in prison or a fine of up to 30 million won ($22,401), and the government plans to establish grounds for rejecting or invalidating applications that deliberately violate the principle of good faith.

The culture ministry has run a counseling desk dedicated to AI companies through the Korea Copyright Commission this year, handling 96 cases from February to August. It plans to distribute a standard contract for the transfer and licensing of works for AI training within the year and to introduce an AI usage information statement that specifies the degree of human contribution when registering AI-assisted works.