미래 메타버스 환경에서 발명과 특허에 관한 소고

The term metaverse is a combination of the Greek word ‘meta-’, meaning transcendence, and the English word ‘universe’, meaning the world. It has been defined in various ways according to the change of technology. With the development of metaverse-related technologies, the metaverse environment changes, and in the future, humans may use the metaverse environment as a new place of life. In addition, it is necessary to consider whether or not to recognize and protect users’ creations within the metaverse environment as intellectual property rights. In the field of copyright law related to mental civilization, it is possible to protect creations in the metaverse environment as works, but in the field of industrial property rights premised on the physical world, there may arise a problem as to whether to protect creations in the metaverse environment with industrial property rights, especially patents. Currently, metaverse-related inventions are possible due to improvements in physical systems and computing functions, but the virtual environment is a space far from the ‘law of nature’ and it is difficult to find physical elements. Moreover, since creation in the metaverse environment is based on the preset settings of the creator of the metaverse environment, and access to technical elements may be limited, programming in the metaverse environment may be difficult to find elements beyond the computer program itself. Therefore, this thesis examines the current metaverse and patented inventions, and studies on the creations created by users in the future metaverse environment, that is, inventions and their patent subject matter eligibility.