1. 2007’s Korean Patent Tendency
The number of patent applications filed by small and medium companies has increased while the number of patent applications filed by large companies has decreased. According to the report regarding “2007’s Korean Patent Tendency”, published by the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO; Commissioner: Jungsik KOH), the number of patent applications filed by small and medium companies increased by 18.4%, from 20,575 in 2005 to 24,355 in 2006.
However, the number of patent applications filed by large companies decreased by 8.6%, from 69,237 in 2005 to 63,291 in 2006.
The number of the small and medium companies which filed the patent applications increased by 15.9%, from 8,923 to 10,342 but the number of the large companies which filed the patent applications decreased from 569 to 565.
The number of patent applications filed by universities through the joint research conducted by industry-university cooperation groups increased by 101.4%, from 418 in 2005 to 842 in 2006.
A KIPO spokesman said, “It is considered that as the government increased the funding for small and medium companies’ technological renovation, those companies’ technological developments have been very active. Further, as universities have concentrated on practical research utilized in the industrial fields as well as on scientific research, the number of the patent applications filed by the universities is increasing.”
2. The number of foreign trademarks using the “Madrid System” is increasing
The number of foreign trademarks, the applications of which are filed with KIPO by designating the Republic of Korea through the Madrid Protocol (comprising 82 member nations including the Republic of Korea) and which are registered through KIPO’s examination, is rapidly increasing every year,
According to KIPO, 27,758 international trademarks are registered, the applications of which were filed by foreign applicants through the Madrid System since the Republic of Korea joined the Madrid Protocol in 2003 up to now (as of May 31, 2008).
In proportion to the rate of filing trademark applications with the annual average increase of 23.4%, the number of the international trademark registrations is increasing every year, from 960 in 2004, 5588 in 2005, 8024 in 2006 to 8484 in 2007. These increases show that foreign applicants’ use of the Madrid International Trademark System has grown in the 6 years since KIPO introduced the System.
The trademarks of applications, which are filed with KIPO by foreign applicants from many countries of the world, are registered at relatively high rates in the fields of electronic equipment and scientific/medical devices (14.2%), machines/metals (8%), clothes/fabrics (7.8%) and education/entertainment services (7.6%). In these fields, foreign companies actively seek access to the Republic of Korea.
To the contrary, the number of the international trademark applications filed in foreign countries by the Korean applicants by using the Madrid System is only a total of 863 (from 2003 to 2007, which is 0.53% of the total number of the international trademark applications filed in the countries of the Madrid Protocol). The actual results of Korean applicants are still small, compared to those of foreign applicants who file trademark applications with KIPO.
3. ETRI (Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute) has brought patent litigation against foreign mobile phone manufacturers
ETRI announced that they have brought international patent litigation against foreign mobile phone manufacturers which used ETRI’s patent technology without permission.
ETRI brought the ‘litigation for prohibiting the patent infringement and for claiming damages’ to the Virgina Eastern District Court, through SPH America, a US licensee, against Sony Ericsson, Kyocera, and HTC which are mobile phone manufacturing companies.
According to an assertion from ETRI, these companies have used, without permission, three patents regarding the ETRI’s core technology which extends the battery use time by reducing power consumption of a mobile communication terminal, without any legal procedures or agreements, since about 2005.
This is the first case where ETRI brought patent litigation against the relevant manufacturers. If ETRI prevails in the litigation, ETRI is expected to additionally secure royalty revenue of USD 200,000,000 (corresponding to about Korea Won 200,000,000,000) or more.
A spokesman of the ETRI intellectual property team said, “If the litigation normally progresses, the result of the litigation will be made in the first half of the next year. (ETRI) has secured the intellectual property rights in the level of protecting the technology but will positively use the rights in the future.”
ETRI has about 15,000 Korean and foreign patents related IT. To protect the intellectual property rights in foreign countries, ETRI uses the patent right by the agreement with SPH America which is a US patent related special company.
4. Nichia’s patent offensive is daunted
The LED patent offensive which Nichia Chemical Industries (hereinafter, referred to as ‘Nichia’) of Japan has taken against the Korean companies becomes daunted.
Seoul Semiconductor (CEO: Junghoon LEE) announced that they won the ‘trial for patent invalidation’ and ‘trial for scope confirmation’ regarding Korean Patent No. 406201 related to the blue LED chip structure owned by Nichia, which were brought to the Korean Intellectual Property Tribunal (KIPT) in last March. Since the litigation for prohibiting patent infringement and for claiming damages based on the same patent are pending in the Seoul Central District Court and England, this decision is considered as having a great influence on the pending litigation in the future.
The Korean patent which is invalidated by Seoul Semiconductor relates to a “light-emitting gallium nitride-based compound semiconductor device with double heterostructure”. In the decision of the trials, KIPT indicated that since the relevant technology had been already open to the public at those days when Nichia patent technology was registered, the Nichia patent technology did not meet the requirements for patent registration.
Arguing that the decision of KIPT is against the ‘principle of priority’ according to the Paris Convention, Nichia clarifies the intention to file an appeal against the decision of KIPT. The principle of priority means that, when an applicant who legally files a patent application for an invention in one country (a first country) files an application for the same invention in the other country (a second country) within a predetermined period from the date of filing the application in the first country, the patent requirements of the application filed in the second country is judged at the time of filing the application in the first country.
That is, according to the explanation from Nichia, even though the Nichia’s invention was already open when the application for the invention was filed in the Republic of Korea, the invention has sufficient value as a patent in light of the time of filing the application in Japan. A Nichia spokesman said that they would bring a trial for canceling the decision of each trial after analyzing the contents of the written decision of each trial made by KIPT. He was also convinced that the trial for canceling the decision of each trial will be the next decision.
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