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Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) held a ¡®2008 Patent Distribution Festival¡¯ (158)

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KH

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2008-12-16

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1. Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) held a ¡®2008 Patent Distribution Festival¡¯

A large-scale technology transfer and auction event was opened to promote the distribution of patent technology.

KIPO (Commissioner: Jung-sik KOH) held the ¡®2008 Patent Distribution Festival¡¯ in the COEX Conference Center in Seoul, for two days, November 18 and 19.

This event included a variety of programs for patent technology transfer and commercialization, such as a consultation meeting regarding patent technology transfer, a conference regarding intellectual properties, a patent technology auction, among others.

For this event, in the four months (July to October) this year, KIPO and Korea Invention Promotion Association (KIPA) jointly learned of 114 demanded technologies that companies desired to commercialize. In response, KIPO and KIPA selected 413 technologies to be supplied for their consideration.

In the consultation meeting regarding patent technology transfer, an expert technical dealer attended to support technical transfer and contract agreement through consultation about the previously selected demanded and supplied technologies. Further, a general consultation corner regarding patent technology transfer and commercialization was operated to solve difficult matters (such as practical strategies for technology finance, technology transfer and the like) of participants to trade in patent technology.

The patent technology auction was secondly opened this year. The auction for display-related technology, which has been remarked as a core export industry, was made in the form of open competitive bidding.


2. The number of patent disputes between foreign to Korean pharmaceutical companies is rapidly increasing

Patent disputes are heating up between multinational pharmaceutical companies and Korean pharmaceutical companies over blockbuster medical drugs with high marketability.

According to the Korean Intellectual Property Tribunal (KIPT), the number of patent trials which are inter parties cases in the medical field was only 18 in 2005 but it has remarkably increased every year, with 25 in 2006 and 57 in 2007.

When the expiration of the patent terms of blockbuster medical drugs (i.e., those having a yearly sale more than USD 1,000,000,000 worldwide of multinational pharmaceutical companies draw near, for short-term external growth and profits Korean pharmaceutical companies competitively start releasing generic drugs (copy drugs) to the original patent medical drugs where their patent terms will soon expire. This situation increases the number of the patent trials between these pharmaceutical companies.

Multinational pharmaceutical companies seek an ¡®evergreen¡¯ strategy to extend the monopoly period of the medical drugs by registering subsequent patents in which the original patents related to medicines are partially modified with respect their forms/elements/structures. Korean pharmaceutical companies file the trials to invalidate or confirm the passive scope of the original patents owned by the multinational pharmaceutical companies. As a result, the number of patent disputes increases.

In fact, as for the dispute between Boryung Pharm and Debiopharm concerning a drug to treat colon cancer/stomach cancer, ¡°Oxaliplatin (Eloxatin)¡±, the Supreme Court decided to invalidate the patent of Eloxatin, last October. The dispute was terminated in the favor of Boryung Pharm two years and six months after the trial to invalidate the patent was filed.

Patent disputes concerning some other blockbuster medical drugs, i.e., an anticoagulant drug ¡°Plavix¡±, a high cholesterol drug ¡°Lipitor¡± and an osteoporosis drug ¡°Livial¡±, are pending in the Supreme Court because the related multinational pharmaceutical companies, such as Sanofi, Pfizer, Organon and others, appealed before the Supreme Court against the KIPT and Patent Court which made the decisions to invalidate the original patents.

Pfizer owns the original patent of a high blood pressure drug, ¡°Norvasc¡±. However, as the Patent Court has made a decision to invalidate the patent, Pfizer filed an appeal to the Supreme Court.


3. Foreign patent examination information is available in the Korea Intellectual Property Rights Information Service (KIPRIS)

According to the KIPO¡¯s announcement dated November 4, foreign patent examination information, and other related information are available at the website (www.kipris.or.kr) of KIPRIS, a patent information search service company. Before this service is provided, one needs to directly visit a foreign Patent Office website to obtain the foreign patent examination information. However, now, searches and the reading of foreign patent information, examination processes of relevant patent applications, and searches as to whether the relevant patent applications obtain rights are possible by the one-stop process through only KIPRIS.

KIPO will first provide the service of international applications under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) and will expand the range of the service to the patent applications/patents filed/patented in the major countries (including the US, Europe, Japan and others) into which Korean companies mainly advance.

¡°As it is possible to more easily confirm the information regarding the filing and/or registration of patent applications that Korean companies attentively and carefully watch for their overseas expansion, they will be able to prepare to deal with their competitive companies¡¯ patents in many ways. Furthermore, it will contribute to being one step closer in realizing the ¡®Intellectual Property Rich Korea¡¯ by raising the technology competition of Korean companies,¡± said a spokesperson of KIPO.


4. KIPO opens the actual results of controlling counterfeits by local governments to the public

KIPO announced that, to eradicate counterfeits, they would periodically open, to the public, the actual results of controlling counterfeits by metropolitan local governments and greatly increase grants-in-aid for the local governments having excellent results from the next year.

The results of controlling counterfeits by local governments are published quarterly on the KIPO website (www.kipo.go.kr).

From the results of controlling counterfeits as of the end of September this year, Seoul recorded the best results with 226 cases among the metropolitan cities, and Choong-chung-nam-do recorded the best results with 171 cases among the districts.

The grant-in-aid for the top local governments (two metropolitan cities and three districts) as the result of controlling counterfeits is currently supported by 200,000,000 Korea Won, which will increase to 400,000,000 Korea Won from the next year.

¡°To open the actual results of controlling counterfeits and to strengthen the incentive system will cause competition between local governments, thereby making an opportunity to expedite the eradication of counterfeits. In the future, KIPO will support a business trip abroad or pay a reward to the officials in charge of the local governments having good results, to increasingly lead local governments to make every effort to eradicate counterfeits,¡± said a spokesperson of KIPO.
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