¡¡

HOME > Resources > Newsletters

¡¡

Title

The Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) will establish an organization to take exclusive charge of foreign intellectual property rights (138)

Author¡¡

KH

Post Date¡¡

2008-02-18

Read

10812

Attach File

-
1. The Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) will establish an organization to take exclusive charge of foreign intellectual property rights

On January 24, 2008, TaeYong LEE, Deputy Commissioner of KIPO, announced an ‘overall measure for protecting intellectual property rights?and said that they would improve the level of protection of Korean intellectual property rights to the level of advanced countries.

For this purpose, KIPO aims at constructing an intellectual property right protection system at the level of advanced countries by 2012 and plans to establish strategies and define and promote tasks by ministries and offices, by activating the ‘Council for Intellectual Property Right Protection Policy?formed under the Office for Government Policy Coordination?

Further, KIPO will establish an organization taking exclusive charge of intellectual property rights (called IP-DESK) in the four KOTRA trade centers in foreign countries, including China (with one), Thailand (with one) and Vietnam (with one), where the number of infringement cases of the intellectual property rights of Korean companies have been increasing. The IP-DESK will support the procedures for filing or registering intellectual property rights in the field and will also support consultation on how to cope with infringement, if it occurs, and the damage relief thereof.

Countermeasures on the transaction of counterfeited goods through internet will be strengthened. Control of counterfeited goods in the internet shopping malls including Auction, G-market and others will be strengthened. Counterfeited goods, sites, secret caf? and bloges will be closed through business cooperation with the agencies in charge.


2. The number of patent applications related to an USN (ubiquitous sensor network) is rapidly increasing

It is reported that the number of patent applications in the USN field is rapidly increasing.

According to KIPO’s recent analysis, the number of patent applications in the USN field shows an increase of 156% per year from 2001 to 2005. This indicates that the number of the patent applications for the USN-related technologies has continuously increased and the technology development has been positively conducted.

By the proportion of Korean applicants to foreign applicants of the applications filed in the USN field during the aforementioned period, Korean applicants hold 95%, indicating that the applications filed by the Korean applicants have led this field.

The tendency of the steady increase in the number of these applications is considered as the result of development conditions for the relevant technology has been matured as the RFID/USN activation plan and its subsequent plan at the governmental level have been announced, various private and governmental tentative projects have been performed step by step, the wireless communication technology, such as high-speed internet and the like, and the high-tech digital technology have been rapidly developed.

The RFID/USN field will be raised as one of the next-generation growth powers at the governmental level. Accordingly, as research and technology development will be continuously and actively conducted by the relevant companies expecting the expansion of the market in this field, the number of the patent applications in the RFID/USN field is expected to greatly increase.


3. The number of patent applications filed by Korean universities is rapidly increasing

Recently, it was learned that in 2006 the number of patent applications as filed and patents as registered by Korean universities greatly increased, compared with 2005. According to the 2006 industry-academic cooperation white paper of universities, which was published by the Ministry of Education & Human Resources Development and the Korea Research Foundation on January 14, 2008, the number of foreign patent applications filed by Korean universities is 731 and the number of Korean patent applications filed by Korean universities is 4,635, showing an increase of 16.8% and 62.0%, respectively, compared with 2005.

The white paper is based on the products of the 2006 industry-academic cooperation of 134 universities and graduate schools which are capable of developing technologies in the country.

The number of registered foreign patents is 183, a 50.5% increase compared with 2005, and the number of registered Korean patents is 2,973, with an 83.2% increase.

Specifically, the average research expense per patent application decreased from 1,454,000,000 Korea Won in 2005 to 852,000,000 Korea Won in 2006 and the average number of patent applications per 1,000,000,000 Korea Won increased from 1.5 in 2005 to 1.8 in 2006. From the data, it is evident that the productivity increased.

The number of concluded agreements of technology transfer is 563, with a 4.1% decrease compared with 2005. Nevertheless, the income of the technology transfer is 9,033,000,000 Korea Won, a 42.9% increase, so that the average value per technology is considered to have increased.


4. Samsung maintains its second place ranking in the number of patents registered with the USPTO

Samsung Electronics maintained the second place ranking in the number of US patents for the last two years.

According to an announcement dated January 16, 2008 by IFI Patent Intelligence which is a US patent information service company, Samsung Electronics registering a total of 2,725 patents in 2007 is 2nd in ranking, following IBM with 3,148 patents. Samsung Electronics held second place with 2,453 US patents in 2006.

The total number of US patents has decreased by about 9%. However, in contrast, the number of patents registered in 2007 by Samsung Electronics increased by 11% compared with that in 2006.

Specifically, the differential between the number of patents registered by Samsung Electronics being 2nd and the number of patents registered by Canon being 3rd in 2006 is only 75 cases. However, the differential between the number of patents by Samsung Electronics and that of the company being 3rd in 2007 increased to 738 cases, thereby securing second place. Furthermore, the differential from IBM, holding first place for 15 years, is remarkably reduced from 1198 cases in 2006 to 423 cases in 2007, thereby enhancing the possibility of being first in the future.
¡¡

Prev¡¡

Mr. Soon-Woo HONG has joined P. K. KIM & ASSOCIATES as a partner patent attorney. (139)

Next¡¡

The ¡®Korea-USA Patent Examination Highway¡¯ has been tentatively carried out from January 28, 2008 (137)
¡¡ ¡¡ ¡¡ ¡¡ ¡¡ ¡¡ ¡¡
¡¡ ¡¡ ¡¡ ¡¡ ¡¡ ¡¡

¡¡

¡¡ ¡¡ ¡¡ ¡¡ ¡¡ ¡¡ ¡¡
¡¡
¡¡