1. The number of Korean registered patents exceeded one million
The Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) announced that the number of Korean registered patents exceeded one million at the end of 2010, with it being 62 years since a patent regarding a method of manufacturing an oil painting dye was first registered in the Republic of Korea.
The achievement of reaching one million registered patents was faster than either the US or Japan in that it took 75 years and 97 years, respectively, for these countries to reach one million registered patents.
Following the US (1911) operating its patent system prior to the 19th century, Canada (1976) and Japan (1982), the Republic of Korea became the fourth country to achieve one million registered patents in the world. Specially, only the Republic of Korea as a country introducing and operating the patent system in 20th century exceeded one million registered patents.
Among the one million registered patents, the number of the patents registered during the latest 10 years (2001~2010) was about 690,000, holding 2/3 of the total. This is mainly considered as a result of a rapid increase of the patents registered in the IT field according to the popular use of mobile phones and the growth of semiconductor industries starting from the later half of 1990. In fact, among the number of the patents registered in the whole technical fields for the last 10 years, the rate of the patents registered in the IT field reaches 52%.
2. The number of Korean patent applications increased after 3 years
KIPO announced that, as a result of analyzing the ‘current state of 2010 patent applications’, the number of patent applications filed in last year totaled 170,600, with an increase of 4.3% compared with the previous year (163,523).
The number of patent applications which was 172,469 at the high point in 2007, decreased for 2 years, 170,632 in 2008 and 163,523 in 2009 but increased in the last year.
KIPO considered that this increase was because of an increasing expectation for business recovery and companies making actively efforts to strengthen competitiveness by preoccupying new technologies and new brands.
By companies, the number of the patent applications filed by big companies was 42,634, with an increase of 9.3% compared with the previous year (39,021). The number of the patent applications filed by medium and small companies was 25,045 in 2010, with an increase of 14.7% compared with 21,964 in 2009.
The number of the patent applications filed by foreign individuals was 995 and the number of the patent applications filed by foreign corporations was 37,677, increasing 9.0% and 6.7%, respectively.
3. A battle to secure patents is intense in the Korean shipbuilding industries
Patent competition among the Korean shipbuilding industries having the world top competitiveness is becoming fierce.
According to KIPO, as a result of analyzing the current status of the applications by the Korean shipbuilding industries during the last 10 years (2001~2010), an annual average increase of 31.3% is shown.
By years, the number of the applications filed by the Korean shipbuilding industries was 771 in 2007, 1065 in 2008, 1235 in 2009 and 1405 in 2010, repeating a great growth every year.
By companies, Samsung Heavy Industries filed 1,099 patent applications in 2010, thereby for the first time opening the ‘era of 1000 patent applications’ as a single Korean shipbuilding company. This influenced Hyundai Heavy Industries and Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering, among others, with which Samsung Heavy Industries is in competition, causing a recent accompanying increase of patent applications in all the shipbuilding industries.
By technologies, most applications are related to a ship body structure, a marine structure, fittings and the like. These days, the number of the applications for ship propelling parts (such as propeller relating to energy efficiency improvement) and use of environment-friendly renewable energy is gradually increasing.
4. ‘One Time Password (OTP) Integrated Authentication’ of the Financial Security Agency (FSA) has been adopted as an international standard in ITU-T
FSA (President, Chang-gyu KWAG) announced that the OTP integrated authentication technology developed by FSA was finally adopted as the international standard in the International Telecommunication Union Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T).
This technology standardizes the technological model of the OTP Integrated Authentication Center which is applied to the Korean finance and is presently used. FTA explained that the technology owned by FTA has been approved as a world standard at home and abroad by securing the international standard after the OTP Integrated Authentication Technology was selected as the Korean standard and registered as a patent.
Specifically, this is the first case where pure original Korean technology has been selected as an international standard in the electronic financial authentication technology field. Thus, this is expected to be an opportunity where the Korean electronic financial authentication technology will be internationally recognized.
In this regard, “FSA will actively and steadily research various authentication technologies to be used in the Korean electronic finance and continuously secure reliable technical skills in connection with the international standardization in the future,” said Chang-gyu KWAG, President of FSA.
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