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The number of registration of Korean trademarks passed 1,000,000 (167)

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KH

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2009-05-07

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1. The number of registration of Korean trademarks passed 1,000,000

On April 20, 2009, the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO; Commissioner: Jung-sik KOH) announced that the number of registration of marks, such as trademarks and the like, passed 1,000,000 fifty-seven years after the trademark ¡°¡± was first registered on August, 1952 by the Trademark Law established on November 1949 after the Government had formed.
It took nineteen years until the same number of trademarks was registered in China, eighty-six years in Japan, ninety-two years in the US and one-hundred fourteen years in GB. Classified by types, 790,000 cases are for trademarks, 180,000 for service marks, and 30,000 for business marks and the like.
Classified by owners of rights, 700,000 cases (70%) are owned by corporations, 250,000 (25%) by individuals, and the rest by the other public bodies and the like.
Further, 230,000 cases (23%) are owned by foreigners, including 79,000 by the US, 57,000 by Japan and 17,000 by Germany, among others.
The number of registration of service marks had steadily increased to be 50% (20,000 cases) of the number of registration of trademarks (40,000 cases) in 2008. Since services are directly provided to demanders by specific persons and the reliance on the services are accumulated for a long time, a continuance rate (82%) of a service mark is higher than that (67%) of a trademark.


2. A leakage of an LED electric current is reduced by 90%

Zener diodes have been developed to significantly increase the driving power of an electric current by reducing the current resistance about 70%, compared to the existing foreign products.
Sigetronics (www.sigetronics.com) announced that from the end of April, they were equipped with the full line-up of the zener diode products to protect the LED static electricity, which is high in the electrical and thermal reliability.

When a zener diode is used in the die bonding process of bonding a lead frame to a substrate for packaging, even though silver paste as an electrode material spreads upward, along an edge of a chip, the leakage of a current does not greatly increase. Therefore, it is effective in the mass production of the LED packaging. Zener diodes are variously usable for high-power LEDs, such as exterior illumination lights, signal lights, streetlights and the like, and have semi-permanent durability.
Sigetronics completed the registration of patents relating to an original device structure of a zener diode product and a method for manufacturing the zener diode product. They acquired certifications including the Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive (ROHS) (directive on the restriction of the use of certain hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment), the material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS), and the International Organization for Standardization (IOS) 9001, among the others.


3. A guard to protect intellectual Properties has started its official services

KIPO announced that the Korea Intellectual Property Association (KOIPA) opened as an advance guard point to protect domestic and foreign intellectual property rights on April 7, 2009. According to KIPO, KOIPA will develop the full-scale activities to protect intellectual property rights by supporting the activities to control counterfeit goods at home, providing the pre-support and post-support regarding an infringement of an intellectual property right of an exporter in the field and supporting a company involved with an international patent dispute.
According to an explanation of a spokesman of KIPO, [Korea] is 4th in world ranking in the number of patent applications filed. Nevertheless, the level of protecting intellectual property rights is low. This deteriorates the international confidence in Korea and fails to lead technological innovation and to attract foreign capital. KOIPA to officially perform the aforementioned services is an organization being fully responsible for protecting intellectual property rights, in which big/medium/small companies and middle standing enterprises participate to overcome these situations.
¡°KOIPA is expected to serve as a stepping stone for building up rich and powerful Korea focused on intellectual properties,¡± said the Commissioner of KIPO.


4. North Korea thoroughly protects and encourages intellectual property rights

¡°Greeting the World Intellectual Property Day (April 26), North Korea has progressed the projects to legally protect and encourage intellectual property rights with the national concerns,¡± emphasized the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) of North Korea. According to KCNA, North Korea has adopted the ¡®Invention Law of the Democratic People¡¯s Republic of Korea DPRK)¡¯ so that invention rights /patent rights are allowed with respect to scientific and technological results which are novel and developmental and have high technological and economical effects. ¡°This is to protect the rights of owners having the invention rights/patent rights so as to be correctly secured, and to continuously increase investments needed for positively encouraging the invention projects and introducing the invention projects in reality,¡± added KCNA.
According to KCNA, North Korea has adopted the laws to protect trademarks, geographical indications and industrial designs, to thoroughly establish systems and order in the requests/examinations for registrations of a trademark, geographical indication and industrial design, and to lead industrial designs to be constantly renewed in line with the economic development and production increase.
Further, under the ¡®Copyright Law of DPRK¡¯, personal and property rights are given to the people who make the creations/compilations, such as various literary and artistic productions, scientific papers, maps, figures and computer programs. All workers shall keep the established order to protect copyrights and to use literary works.



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Preferential examination of a trademark application is now in operation. (168)

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The number of trademark applications filed in Korea by foreign applicants through the Madrid Protocol is rapidly increasing (166)
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