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The number of patent applications filed by companies last year greatly increased thanks to the business recovery (News Letter No. 209)

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KH

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2011-02-01

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1. The number of patent applications filed by companies last year greatly increased thanks to the business recovery

- The respective numbers of patent applications filed by big companies and small/medium companies, which had continuously decreased, increased by 9.3% and 14.0% -

The number of patent applications, which had been continuously decreasing for the last 2~3 years due to the worldwide economic depression, increased along with the business recovery last year.

As a result of an analysis of the application situation for 2010 conducted by the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO), the number of patent applications filed with KIPO totaled 170,600, showing an increase of 4.3% in compared with 163,523 in 2009.

The number of the patent applications filed by big companies, which had continuously decreased for 3 years from 2007 to 2009, increased by 9.3% (42,634) compared with that in 2009. The number of the patent applications filed by small and medium companies, which had continuously decreased for 2 years, greatly increased by 14.0% (25,045) on the strength of active technical development activities.

The respective numbers of the patent applications filed by foreign individuals and foreign corporations showed increases of 9.0% (995) and 6.7% (37,677) compared with the previous year.

Korean companies which filed many applications for intellectual property rights included Samsung Electronics (7,179), LG Electronics (5,876) and Hyundai Motor (2,454), among others. Foreign companies included Qualcomm (1,389), Sony (569) and Tokyo Electron (459), among the others. Considering the number of applications filed by countries, Japan filed the most applications (20,020), followed by US (17,533), Germany (4,178) and France (2,271), among the others.


2. The number of the PCT applications filed by the Korean applicants greatly increased under the influence of the Korean business recovery

- PCT with an increase of 20.1% and Madrid with an increase of 44.0% last year -

According to the data compiled by KIPO, the number of foreign patent applications filed in 2010 through the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) regarding an international patent application was 9,639, an increase of 20.1% in comparison with 8,026 in 2009. This increase is expected to positively act in improving the technical competition of the Korean companies in the future.

By applicants, companies or institutes filed 7,646 applications (79.3%) and individuals filed 1,993 (20.7%). Among the companies or institutes, LG Electronics filed the most applications (1,334), followed by Samsung Electronics (690) and LG Chem (176).

In addition, since Korean has been accepted as one of the languages for an international PCT patent publication since 2009 and therefore it is possible to save the time and cost required for making an English translation of the application for its international publication, the number of the international applications in Korean gradually increased to 7,336 in 2010, being 76.1% of the total number of Korean international applications.
- 7,336 international applications in Korean (76.1%)
- 2,303 international applications in English (23.9%)

The number of the international trademark applications filed in 2010 through the Madrid Protocol (the system for an international application for a trademark) was 406, with an increase of 44.0% in comparison with 282 in 2009. The number of designations to each state in the international trademark applications increased from 2,042 in 2009 to 3,308 in 2010, by 62.0%.

The number of the Madrid international trademark applications filed by foreign applicants with KIPO in 2010 increased 2.5%, from 7,824 in 2009 to 8,017. By countries, among the total number of 8,017 cases, US filed 1,316 cases, Germany filed 871 cases, the European Community filed 822 cases and Japan filed 791 cases in the Republic of Korea. By companies, Philip Morris (manufactured the tobacco-related products) of Switzerland filed 87 cases, Novartis (medicine and medical supplies) of Switzerland filed 59 cases, and Philips Electronics (electronic products) of Netherlands filed 38 cases, among the others.


3. KIPO and Samsung Electronics decided to start the global sharing through technology

- They concluded a work agreement on an appropriate technological support for the poorest countries

Based on the accumulated technology and research human resources, KIPO and Samsung Electronics decided to start developing and supplying an appropriate technology that the poorest and developing countries needed. This is the first time that the government and a private company cooperate for the development and supply of the appropriate technology.

On January 20, 2011, Soowon LEE, Commissioner of KIPO, and Minho HAN, Chief of Digital City Center of Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd, concluded a work agreement in the Korea Intellectual Property Service Center located at Gangnam-gu, Seoul, to jointly perform an intellectual property sharing project for a global foreign support, such as the supply of appropriate technology.

The ‘appropriate technology?means not the most advanced technology but a simple yet highly effective technology such that those of the poorest and developing countries can directly use it. Examples of the appropriate technology include a life straw or an irrigation pedal pump, among others. That is, the life straw is a portable purifier in the form of a straw, which is used for the inhabitants of Africa where it is difficult to get clear water because most water is muddy. The irrigation pedal pump is powered by using the feet of the poor farmers.

According to the cooperation agreement, KIPO will support information searches required for the development of the appropriate technology, from patent data reaching about 150,000,000 cases, and be in charge of the cooperation with the relevant country government. Samsung Electronics will support the technological development through the internal R&D human resources reaching about 23,000 people and support the developed technology so as to be available through its foreign branches in the developing countries.


4. [4G mobile communication demonstration] ?3D image of ultra high capacity is continuously transmitted in real time

A demonstration for a 3D image of ultra high capacity was operated in the Korea Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI).

According to an explanation, the 3D screen was selected because it was the existing maximum capacity content.

Transmission smoothly progressed and concern as to whether a discontinuation phenomenon may happen due to high capacity was just groundless.

In this event, multimedia broadcast and multicast services (MBMS, mobile broadcasting services) were smoothly demonstrated. In this demonstration to provide data to two terminals, the speed per terminal was 200Mbps.

The research team secured about 500 IP for this technical development and created 24 core standard patents. It was said that the income of royalties would be about 1 trillion Korea Won.

At the end of the event, a possibility of a video phone was examined in ETRI demonstration bus moving at 40km per hour.

The demonstrations were all successful. The researchers explained with confidence that in the future, this technology would be based for convergence technologies and convergence services to integrate various wireless access networks and to converge diverse industries.

“In foreign countries, the developments of pre-LTE (long term evolution) Advanced are intensive and several tens of companies are keenly competing but it is all modem technology. Only ETRI secures the true 4-generation infra technology.?
ETRI showed the peak performance as a cellular-based next generation mobile communication system having a transmission speed of 600Mbps per secon ¡¡

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KIPO published a ¡°Patent Precedent Study Casebook by Issues¡± (News Letter No. 210)

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A patent automatic evaluation system has a function of analyzing a patent (News Letter No. 208)
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