人工智慧之發展──論人工智慧專利發明人適格性

Development of A.I. -on Crediting A.I. as Patent Inventor

人工智慧之發展往往挑戰著許多人類社會既有概念，也激盪出許多新型態法規範，於專利領域上，亦可見人工智慧所帶來之衝擊，近期，最為明顯之問題為，人工智慧得否成為適格之專利發明人或創作人。本研究擬以近期歐洲專利局（European Patent Office）所做出之駁回專利申請之決定出發，探究此一議題。本文結論認為，部分人工智慧於現今發展下，已具備一定程度之創造力，承載人類經驗而可自行進行創作，此類人工智慧對於創作客體，已有相當程度之介入，於法律上似可給予一定程度之法律地位。然而如同其他虛擬之法律人格一樣，從以保護人類社會經濟生活為出發點之法律來看，法律欲擬制任何法律人格之前提為，該擬制對於人類社會經濟生活有一定層度之助益，即便人工智慧具有創作能力，然而如承認人工智慧具備專利發明人或創作人適格性對於人類社會經濟生活並無明顯助益，抑或即便法律不承認人工智慧具備專利發明人或創作人適格性對於交易雙方當事人並無造成實質上之法規障礙或不便，則法律承認人工智慧得成為專利發明人或創作人，其意義似乎僅剩滿足部分資料科學家希望透過法律上之承認進而對外宣傳其所設計之人工智慧之主觀期待，似無實質、客觀法律或經濟上意義。反之，如法律承認人工智慧得成為專利發明人或創作人對於人類社會經濟生活有一定層度之助益，例如，透過法律擬制人工智慧之發明人或創作人之地位，則可大幅減低當事人交易成本或締約成本，則於未來法律修正上，似非不可考慮賦予人工智慧一定程度之法律上地位，並給予專利發明人或創作人之適格性。

Advance in artificial intelligence brings challenges not only to human society but also to law and policy makers. Concerning patent law, there is an ongoing debate recently on whether artificial intelligence can qualify as an ＂inventor＂ in patent law. This paper starts from a decision made by European Patent Office (abbreviated as EPO hereafter) in 2020, where EPO explicitly rejected the notion that artificial intelligence can be regarded as an ＂inventor＂ in patent law. This paper concluded that a part of the artificial intelligence nowadays are capable of generating new data with a given training set, and thus these kinds of artificial intelligence (mainly generative adversarial neural network and any other branches thereof) can be credited certain level of creativity. However, the premise for law to recognize any artificial entity stands in the existence of the contributed welfare that the recognition can bring to the human society or transaction. If there is no objective or substantial contribution to human transaction or social welfare by recognizing artificial intelligence as patent inventor, it is doubtful that it is worth the effort of policy makers to regard artificial intelligence as inventor. On the other hand, if recognizing artificial intelligence as patent inventor substantially brings contractual benefit other than subjective satisfaction to contract parties, recognizing artificial intelligence as patent inventor might be possible and viable in the perspective of policy makers.