Taiwan's Intellectual Property & Commercial Court (the
IPC Court) published a decision on August 30, upholding the Taiwan
IP Office's ruling that an artificial intelligence (AI) system
cannot be named as a patent inventor. Thaler v. Taiwan
IP Office (TIPO), 110 Xing Zhuan Su 3, Taiwan's
IPC Court (August 2021).
The IPC Court's rationales can be understood as follows:
- Although the Patent Law itself does not explicitly preclude a
non-human inventor, this rule can be inferred from some of the most
important bylaws. In the Patent Examination Guidelines, it is
clearly stated that an inventor must be a human, or a natural
person in legal term.
- The Enforcement Rules of the Patent Law requires disclosure of
an inventor's name and citizenship/nationality in a patent
application. This formality requirement is long considered to be a
measure protecting inventors' personality rights which again
derive from personhood.
