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An invention capital of 500 billion Korea Won is formed. (174)

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KH

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2009-08-17

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1. An invention capital of 500 billion Korea Won is formed.

The government and a private organization will form an invention capital of 500 billion Korea Won for 5 years starting 2011, to establish a specialized company which buys and manages domestic knowledge property with good commercialization prospects. The government has decided to ease the establishment requirements and to expand the business areas, so that the universities and public laboratories owning outstanding knowledge properties can easily establish technology holding companies.

The knowledge property management company to be established will do the businesses in that, after domestic universities, laboratories, companies and the like buy various ideas and patent rights based on the invention capital invested by the private organization and the government, they enhance their values added and lend the ideas and patent rights to the companies needing them. The invention capital means the capital creating profits by buying ideas/patent rights, enhancing their values added and selling their licenses to the company needing the knowledge.


2. MS said that window falls within the trademark ¡°windows¡± and Tmax said that ¡°window¡± is just a noun.

The window trademark dispute between Microsoft (MS) and Tmax Soft has been realized. However, the relevant industries are predicting that, even if Tmax loses in a court dispute, it is difficult to determine the amount of compensation for damages which could reach an astronomical number because it is a dispute relating to a trademark right.

Regarding the dispute situation, on July 15, 2009 MS Korea (Representative: James Woo KIM) announced that they sent Tmax Soft a certification of contents requesting to stop using the trademark, ¡®Window¡¯, which is similar to that of OS ¡®Windows¡¯ of MS. According to MS Korea, the use of similar names for the same product clearly constitutes an infringement of a trademark right. If the request to stop the use of the trademark is not accepted, MS Korea has a plan to bring this issue to the court.

Tmax opposed to MS Korea with the logic that a window is just a general noun. Tmax¡¯s argument is that the term, ¡®window¡¯, has been used as a meaning, ¡®a specified region in a part on the display screen¡¯, before the OS products of MS was released. The word, ¡®Tmax¡¯, is a proper trademark registered in many countries, and the combination of the proper trademark ¡®Tmax¡¯ and the general noun ¡®window¡¯ is a custom in the relevant industries. In these circumstances, the two companies have the sharp different views, enhancing a possibility of a court dispute.

The dispute with MS may be an opportunity to inform others of the Tmax window name in the global market. Further, even if Tmax Soft loses in the court dispute, the amount of compensation for damages seems to be very low because the amount is fixed according to the sale of Tmax window. Since Tmax has not yet released their products, there is no sales data. Even after Tmax sells the product, the compensation for damage is generally limited to profits.


3 The light emitting diode (LED) technology is now expanding to communication

The LED technology starting from the illumination field has reached to the LED TV, LED notebook and so on and it is expanding to the mobile phone field.

In the future, when the light from a street light or the like around a bus stop is shown on a mobile phone, the information (such as a bus service rout, a bus schedule and so on) will be displayed on the mobile phone by using the LED visible light communication applied to the mobile phone. When the light from a street light or the like around a theater is shone on the mobile phone, it will be possible to know the information of a movie to be shown or an available seat, without entering the theater.

The LED visible light communication means a communication system to wirelessly send/receive data by using the light (visible light) generated from an LED illumination device. That is, the LED visible light communication is the addition of a communication function to an illumination function which is the original function of a LED device.

The reason why the LED illumination device, unlike the illumination devices such as a fluorescent light or an incandescent light, can be used as a communication device lies in the LED which is a core element of the LED illumination device. That is, since the structure or signal wave of an LED is similar to that of an laser diode (LD) which is a typical communication element used for a high speed internet network, the LED is capable of sending data through the illumination light, like the LD.

LD is a semiconductor element for communication, which converts an electric signal into an optical signal. As much as the high speed optical communication started by the invention of LD, LD is important in the modern communication network.

According to KIPO, as the LED-related technology has been rapidly developed, the number of patent applications relating to the LED visible light communication which is the communication system based on LED was from 3 in 2005 to 12 in 2008, totaling 40 for 4 years.

Considering that the LED visible light communication field is in the beginning step of technological development, the number of the applications was small but it has been steadily increasing. Specifically, Samsung Electronics filed 56% of the total number of applications in this field, while foreign applications filed only about 10% of the total.

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Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO: Commissioner: Jung-sik KOH) and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) will jointly develop the ¡®Intellectual Property Panorama¡¯ in the official UN languages (175)

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