Korean Patent documents will be provided worldwide through the WIPO website.

Korean Intellectual Property Office (“KIPO”) announced that in response to WIPO’s request, it has started providing a worldwide search service of Korean patent documents and their examination results through WIPO’s “Patent Scope” search site (http://www.wipo.int/patentscope/en/) as of September 2006.

The “Patent Scope” is a WIPO site providing patent search services whereby people can search and view international patent documents. By way of this new service, KIPRIS, a web site providing searching services of Korean patent documents at KIPO, will be directly linked to the Patent Scope site.

Anyone can search Korean patent documents via the summary of the patent specification and examination results through the WIPO homepage. This cooperative service has been promoted in response to the request of WIPO during the information conference of KIPO-WIPO held in March 2006 in Taejon, Korea.

In six years, Korea rose seven places from the ranking of thirteen (13) in 2000. The Republic of Korea ranked third in terms of the number of Korean domestic patent application filings in the world. Furthermore, last year, Korean patent documents were designated as essential documents in the international preliminary examination procedure. Based on the above, the significance of the Korean patent documents is noted to have increased internationally.

From this point on, Korean patent documents will be available to researchers in the world through the WIPO homepage which will allow them convenient channels to search Korean patent documents and also increase the applicability of Korean patent documents.

Revised Bill of Intellectual Property Related Law Announced

The Intellectual Property System will be improved in such a way as to strengthen the patentee’s position. Last June, the KIPO announced a revised bill of Patent Law, Utility Model Law, Design Law, and Trademark Law that is proposed to be in force as of July 2007. The gist of the revised bill of Patent Law and Utility Model Law is to introduce the deferment of submitting claims, to alleviate the description requirements of the specification and to diversify the drafting method of claims.

According to the revised bill of Patent Law, claims may be submitted as late as the time of filing a request for examination (5 years from the application date at the latest).

Under the current Patent Law, in a patent invalidation trial, a petitioner could always submit new evidence while a respondent was not given proportionate opportunities to respond to the petitioner. According to the revised bill of Patent Law, a patentee is given an opportunity to narrow the claims to avoid the non-obviousness issue whenever the petitioner submits new evidence in an invalidation trial.

In addition, the revised bill of Patent Law contains a more lenient description requirement for specifications and so forth.

According to the revised bill of Trademark Law, the subject matters protected by the Trademark Law will be expanded to encompass motion marks, hologram marks, and color per se marks. Additionally, the conversion of applications between a trademark, a service mark, and a collective mark will be allowed. Furthermore, the additional application of a new subgroup of class of goods to the existing registration and the renewal of an application will both be allowed to be converted into a newly filed trademark application.

Meanwhile, according to the revised Patent Law promulgated on March 3, 2006, from the date of October 1, 2006 dual application for a patent and a utility model will not be allowed and instead, the new application of conversion between a patent and a utility model application will be allowed. Furthermore, the waiver of substantial examination for utility model cases has been repealed and a utility model application will be granted only after it goes through a substantial examination in the same manner as a patent application.

Increasing demands to expand the subject matter of patents related to computer programs

As distribution methods for IT-related technologies and computer programs are changing rapidly, demands are increasing for a new systematic device that can protect computer program developers more effectively. The Internet has introduced the network as an alternative to previous recording media (floppy disks and CD ROMs), which were mostly used in software transactions, and such change has brought about various problems. Therefore, many urgently insist that a systematic device should be provided in order to solve these problems.

In the survey conducted on the 19th July at the ‘Presentation on the Improvement of Patent System related to Computer Programs,’ hosted by KIPO with participation from more than 100 software experts, almost eight (8) out of ten (10) respondents said that computer program claims should be granted a patent (61.1% for people related to the software industry, 93.3% for people related to patent laws, and 73.3% for people related to other fields with an overall percentile of 82%). Urgency was expressed by 85% of the people who supported such patent grant; they insisted that the new systematic device should be provided within two to three years.

Also, in last year’s research project by KIPO titled, ‘Study on the expanded protection for IT-related inventions and its influences,’ 76% of respondents said that some improvements should be made to the system that protects computer programs (76.1% of the total 317 respondents). Such high rates show that the interest of related industries is increasing year after year.

Meanwhile, some small domestic businesses are still opposing the protection of computer programs as patents, saying that it will weaken the industrial competitiveness of domestic software. However, the object of this ‘Improvement of Patent System related to Computer Programs’ is to protect inventions from being transferred through the network due to the change in distribution methods, instead of only protecting inventions in the form of ‘recording media that can be read by computers’ or “method.” The objective is not about protecting expressions that can be embodied via computer programs such as computer programming languages or protocols.

The so-called, “Trilateral” in patents (America, Europe, and Japan) are granting the computer program claims patents, given that the claims comply with proper requirements as an invention and they are also expanding the subject matter of such patents. Furthermore, as shown in the 2004 Korea-Japan FTA negotiation, Japan requested Korea to grant the computer program claims patents. In such circumstances of international pressure for patent protection, argument is raised that Korea should deal with this situation more actively to increase its international competitiveness instead of stubbornly insisting on its passive stand of protecting its domestic industry.

Using on/off-line media, KIPO systematiccally provides expired patent information

The KIPO announced on August 16, 2006 that the office will disclose 7,630 expired patents related to electric/electronic/IT fields through newspapers and the internet in order to create added value by reusing the expired patents, which are deemed public assets.

In the past, in order to view information on expired patents, individuals or companies had to access the KIPO homepage and request the original list of registration or have an on-site visit to KIPO. Searchers also had to know the exact name or registration number of such patents. In short, it was very difficult to search for expired patents in the fields of their interest.

With this new service offered via on and off-line media, it is expected that such information on expired patens will be accessed easily and conveniently.

KIPO added that, “Expired patents are national assets. They also serve as a ‘hidden treasure’ for new leaps of national industrial development. We will promote the use of such treasures by disclosing relevant information twice a year through various media, as well as through our homepage. This will allow our customers to easily access the treasures they want.”

According to statistics, the number of registered patents during the first half of this year was 70,561. The number of expired patents were 28,564, making up 40% of registered patents. Among the expired patents from January to June of this year, 6% expired by lapse of the valid period. The remaining 94% expired due to failure to pay registration fees. It is highly probable that nonpayment was caused by changes in the market, introduction of new technologies, or reduction in size of business.

Expired patents are patents without exclusive rights for their holders. The rights are nullified under Article 94 of the Patent Law, for reasons such as lapse of valid period, waiving of rights, or nonexistence of inheritance successor.

Expiration does not mean that the patents are no longer valuable. Since expired patents are approved as having technical creativity and industrial utility during their examination process, they can still become a high value-added technology through appropriate commercial usage, even though their exclusive rights have been nullified.

The recent trend of high gas prices is increasing worldwide concerns regarding unstable gas supply. To overcome these concerns, commercialization of solar batteries is becoming realistic as a new type of recyclable energy.

If core technologies and patent information related to the commercialization of the renewable resource field can be properly provided, not only will the development of solar energy be accelerated, but international competitiveness for the domestic industry will be improved immensely.

IT business represents 30% of all patent issuances during the first quarter of this year

The Ministry of Information and Communication announced on August 10, 2006 that 7,926 patents were issued for domestic IT businesses for the last quarter. This made up 30.2% of the entire 26,227 patent issuances for the first quarter of this year. Last year, 21,289 patents were issued for IT businesses, which made up 28.8% of all 73,509 domestic patent application filings. Of the 28.8%, small and medium sized IT companies made up 15.5%.

Based on last year’s statistics on IT business patent application filings in terms of types of businesses, information and communication device manufacturing accounted for 94% (19,914 cases), information and communication related services accounted for 3.4% (720 cases), and software industry accounted for 2.6% (555 cases). SAMSUNG Electronics were issued the highest number of patents (6,835 cases) and LG Electronics took second place (4,614 cases), SAMSUNG SDI took third place (992 cases), DONGBU Electronics took fourth place (803 cases), and SAMSUNG Electro-Mechanics took fifth place (399 cases).

In terms of government supported research institutes, Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) ranked first last year with 1,013 cases. Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) came in second (301 cases), Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in third( 218 cases), and Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology in fourth (209 cases).