South Korea's National IP Committee has reviewed five AI-IP guides covering patents, copyright and designs

Key takeaways

• The release puts the principle in its headline: "AI는 도구, 권리는 사람의 기여로" (AI is a tool, rights come from a person's contribution).
• Patents: AI cannot be an inventor, and an examiner may ask for a handwritten-signature inventor confirmation if human contribution is doubted.
• Copyright: AI output itself cannot be registered, but a compilation work can be where the human selection, arrangement or composition itself involves a recognised creative contribution; AI training is not uniformly excluded from fair use.
• Designs: AI cannot be named as creator; under the design guideline, a person must have conceived the dominant features.

What did the committee do on 8 October 2026?

The National Intellectual Property Committee, which sits under the Prime Minister, held its 42nd plenary on 8 October 2026 in Seoul. According to the release, the meeting was convened to check, in one sitting, the standards for protecting AI-assisted works across patents, designs and copyright. Its headline says the committee deliberated and finalised four agenda items. The attachment shows the split: items one to three, the patent, copyright and design guides, were oral reports, and item four, a revision of the committee's operating rules, was a written deliberation.

So the new event is the committee's review. The release itself says the patent guideline was published in June, and the copyright guides carry dates from 2025 and early 2026. The release does not state that the committee approved or changed the guides, and this review covers only what the release and its attachment report.

What do the patent and design guides say about human contribution?

On patents, the release says the Ministry of Intellectual Property published its guideline for AI-assisted inventions in June 2026 (9 June, according to the attachment). The release leads with this line: "AI는 발명자가 될 수 없으며, 사람의 '실질적 기여'가 있어야 특허 가능함을 명확히 하고" In English, the guideline says AI cannot be an inventor and a person must contribute substantively. The attachment adds that, under the Patent Act, only a natural person can be an inventor, and that the IP5 offices confirmed this through court decisions such as the DABUS cases.

Where the human contribution is in doubt, the examiner may issue a notice of grounds for rejection and may ask for materials such as an inventor confirmation with a handwritten signature. The release gives three examples of accepted contribution: entering specially designed physical conditions into AI, selecting and correcting AI candidates using the researcher's own expertise, and carrying out the experiments that confirm an AI proposal. It gives two examples that do not count: simple instructions to AI, and filing AI output without review. The attachment also says applicants and agents must examine the truthfulness of the specification whether or not AI was used, and that obtaining a patent by deception, such as by submitting false experimental results, can lead to patent invalidity and to legal liability including criminal liability under Article 229 of the Patent Act.

On designs, the release says AI cannot be listed in the creator field of the application. A design made with AI can still be registered where a person conceived the dominant features that shape the overall aesthetic impression and used AI as a tool to realise them. The attachment lists practical points: keep records such as prompt logs in case authorship must be proved, protect draft designs from leaking into AI training data because that can destroy novelty, and check AI output against prior designs before filing. It adds that a registration obtained without real human contribution may later be invalidated.

What do the three generative-AI copyright guidelines say?

The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism reported three guides. The registration guide (Korean edition June 2025, English edition November 2025) says AI output as such cannot be registered, while a work with a recognised human creative contribution can be. A compilation work can be registered where the person's selection, arrangement or composition of AI output itself involves a recognised creative contribution; human involvement alone is not enough. The attachment adds that a bare prompt is unlikely to count as a creative contribution, and that the registration authority conducts only a formal examination and does not assess the degree of human contribution.

The dispute-prevention guide (same dates) says infringement is judged on two points: whether the user knew of an existing work and generated the output from it, and whether the creative expression is substantially similar. The fair-use guide (Korean edition February 2026, English edition May 2026) addresses Article 35-5 of the Copyright Act. The release says training is not uniformly excluded from fair use because it is commercial or uses web crawling, and that four factors are weighed together: purpose and character of use, type and use of the work, amount and importance of the part used, and effect on the market for the work.

What does it mean for IP counsel, R&D teams and creative studios?

For patent counsel and R&D teams, the practical point is documentation. The guideline places the inventor question on what a named person actually contributed, and the examiner can ask for a signed confirmation. A team that cannot say who did what with the AI tool has a gap. The attachment also warns that entering ideas into an external AI may expose them to third parties and make a patent harder to obtain.

For design and creative teams, the same logic applies to authorship records and to novelty. For AI developers, the fair-use guide gives a factor-based test rather than a safe harbour. The release does not say any of this changes the statutes. These are the offices' stated positions.

What did the release say will happen next?

The release lists follow-up steps, all stated as plans. The Ministry of Intellectual Property said it would build up AI invention and filing cases, prepare examination guidance that asks for proof where creator eligibility is doubted, and create a legal basis to reject or invalidate patents for deliberate bad-faith filings. The attachment dates that rule-making to the second half of 2026. The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism said it would distribute a standard contract for assignment and licensing of works for AI training within the year and would pursue a statement form that discloses human contribution when AI-assisted works are registered. The attachment also reports that unrepresented individual patent filings rose 289 per cent, from 4,954 to 19,263, in January to May 2026 against the same period a year earlier. The release gives that as background and does not link it to a specific cause.

Until those steps exist, a filer would want to follow the current guides: record who contributed what, review AI output before filing, and keep unpublished ideas out of external AI tools.

What are the key dates and figures?

What we did not verify

What we opened: the press release page on the Korean government briefing site (korea.kr) and its attached PDF of 12 pages, both dated 8 October 2026, on 2026-10-25. We read the Korean text ourselves; the English renderings here are our own and are not an official translation.

What we did not open: the five guides themselves, the Patent Act, the Design Protection Act and the Copyright Act, the DABUS decisions, the committee's own site, any English-language government summary, and the draft revision of the committee's operating rules. We did not check whether the design guideline has been published or how any office applies these guides in practice.

What we refuse to claim: that the guides are binding, that the committee changed or approved their content, that any rule takes effect on a stated date, or that the planned sanctions or contract forms exist yet.

Related briefings

Hub: AI Regulation News hub. Regional pillar: Asia-Pacific AI regulation tracker. By profession: Attorneys and AI regulation.

• Japan Supreme Court decision on AI inventorship (DABUS)
• US Copyright Office report on AI training and human authorship
• Japan copyright Article 30-4 and limits on AI training
• Japan patent attorneys guidance on AI and confidentiality