diff --git a/spacy/language.py b/spacy/language.py
index be5886efa..c3c49d331 100644
--- a/spacy/language.py
+++ b/spacy/language.py
@@ -1091,7 +1091,8 @@ class Language:
             for name, proc in self.pipeline:
                 if (
                     name not in exclude
-                    and hasattr(proc, "model")
+                    and hasattr(proc, "is_trainable")
+                    and proc.is_trainable()
                     and proc.model not in (True, False, None)
                 ):
                     proc.finish_update(sgd)
@@ -1297,7 +1298,9 @@ class Language:
         for name, pipe in self.pipeline:
             kwargs = component_cfg.get(name, {})
             kwargs.setdefault("batch_size", batch_size)
-            if not hasattr(pipe, "pipe"):
+            # non-trainable components may have a pipe() implementation that refers to dummy
+            # predict and set_annotations methods
+            if not hasattr(pipe, "pipe") or not hasattr(pipe, "is_trainable") or not pipe.is_trainable():
                 docs = _pipe(docs, pipe, kwargs)
             else:
                 docs = pipe.pipe(docs, **kwargs)
diff --git a/spacy/pipeline/entityruler.py b/spacy/pipeline/entityruler.py
index a4bc098fb..e89dd8410 100644
--- a/spacy/pipeline/entityruler.py
+++ b/spacy/pipeline/entityruler.py
@@ -2,8 +2,9 @@ from typing import Optional, Union, List, Dict, Tuple, Iterable, Any, Callable
 from collections import defaultdict
 from pathlib import Path
 import srsly
-from spacy.training import Example
 
+from .pipe import Pipe
+from ..training import Example
 from ..language import Language
 from ..errors import Errors
 from ..util import ensure_path, to_disk, from_disk, SimpleFrozenList
@@ -51,7 +52,7 @@ def make_entity_ruler(
     )
 
 
-class EntityRuler:
+class EntityRuler(Pipe):
     """The EntityRuler lets you add spans to the `Doc.ents` using token-based
     rules or exact phrase matches. It can be combined with the statistical
     `EntityRecognizer` to boost accuracy, or used on its own to implement a
@@ -134,7 +135,6 @@ class EntityRuler:
 
         DOCS: https://nightly.spacy.io/api/entityruler#call
         """
-        self._require_patterns()
         matches = list(self.matcher(doc)) + list(self.phrase_matcher(doc))
         matches = set(
             [(m_id, start, end) for m_id, start, end in matches if start != end]
@@ -315,11 +315,6 @@ class EntityRuler:
         self.phrase_patterns = defaultdict(list)
         self._ent_ids = defaultdict(dict)
 
-    def _require_patterns(self) -> None:
-        """Raise an error if the component has no patterns."""
-        if not self.patterns or list(self.patterns) == [""]:
-            raise ValueError(Errors.E900.format(name=self.name))
-
     def _split_label(self, label: str) -> Tuple[str, str]:
         """Split Entity label into ent_label and ent_id if it contains self.ent_id_sep
 
@@ -348,6 +343,12 @@ class EntityRuler:
         validate_examples(examples, "EntityRuler.score")
         return Scorer.score_spans(examples, "ents", **kwargs)
 
+    def predict(self, docs):
+        pass
+
+    def set_annotations(self, docs, scores):
+        pass
+
     def from_bytes(
         self, patterns_bytes: bytes, *, exclude: Iterable[str] = SimpleFrozenList()
     ) -> "EntityRuler":
diff --git a/spacy/pipeline/pipe.pyx b/spacy/pipeline/pipe.pyx
index 585cdc780..70cc1e54e 100644
--- a/spacy/pipeline/pipe.pyx
+++ b/spacy/pipeline/pipe.pyx
@@ -228,6 +228,9 @@ cdef class Pipe:
     def is_resizable(self):
         return hasattr(self, "model") and "resize_output" in self.model.attrs
 
+    def is_trainable(self):
+        return hasattr(self, "model") and isinstance(self.model, Model)
+
     def set_output(self, nO):
         if self.is_resizable():
             self.model.attrs["resize_output"](self.model, nO)
diff --git a/spacy/training/loggers.py b/spacy/training/loggers.py
index 467f1e36b..3a133a0df 100644
--- a/spacy/training/loggers.py
+++ b/spacy/training/loggers.py
@@ -17,8 +17,12 @@ def console_logger(progress_bar: bool = False):
         nlp: "Language", stdout: IO = sys.stdout, stderr: IO = sys.stderr
     ) -> Tuple[Callable[[Optional[Dict[str, Any]]], None], Callable[[], None]]:
         msg = Printer(no_print=True)
-        # we assume here that only components are enabled that should be trained & logged
-        logged_pipes = nlp.pipe_names
+        # ensure that only trainable components are logged
+        logged_pipes = [
+            name
+            for name, proc in nlp.pipeline
+            if hasattr(proc, "is_trainable") and proc.is_trainable()
+        ]
         eval_frequency = nlp.config["training"]["eval_frequency"]
         score_weights = nlp.config["training"]["score_weights"]
         score_cols = [col for col, value in score_weights.items() if value is not None]
@@ -43,7 +47,7 @@ def console_logger(progress_bar: bool = False):
                 return
             losses = [
                 "{0:.2f}".format(float(info["losses"][pipe_name]))
-                for pipe_name in logged_pipes if pipe_name in info["losses"]
+                for pipe_name in logged_pipes
             ]
 
             scores = []
diff --git a/spacy/training/loop.py b/spacy/training/loop.py
index 8f0aea6d4..12395e0b4 100644
--- a/spacy/training/loop.py
+++ b/spacy/training/loop.py
@@ -181,7 +181,8 @@ def train_while_improving(
         for name, proc in nlp.pipeline:
             if (
                 name not in exclude
-                and hasattr(proc, "model")
+                and hasattr(proc, "is_trainable")
+                and proc.is_trainable()
                 and proc.model not in (True, False, None)
             ):
                 proc.finish_update(optimizer)