Transparency as a legal value for patent disclosure

Abstract

This paper is dedicated to the assessment of transparency as a legal value in patent law, as well as in other areas of information flows. It outlines the essence and functions of transparency and, on this basis, proposes a genuinely new conception for assessing transparency. This conception is then applied to the patent system, more particularly to patent disclosure. It sheds new light on disputed issues such as the sufficiency of patent disclosure, the best mode requirement, and the disclosure of training data when patenting AI inventions.