New Year Changes in Intellectual Property System... Focus on Convenience and Innovation Including Introduction of Mobile Electronic Applications

Changes in Intellectual Property Systems in the New Year 2020. Provided by the Korean Intellectual Property Office

[Asia Economy (Daejeon) Reporter Jeong Il-woong] The Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) announced the "2020 New Year Changes in Intellectual Property System," focusing on convenience such as the introduction of mobile electronic applications and support for innovative growth.

According to KIPO on the 2nd, the new changes in the intellectual property system for the new year can be summarized as ▲supporting early rights acquisition for 4th Industrial Revolution technologies ▲enhancing convenience for the public using intellectual property services ▲innovative growth of SMEs and venture companies based on intellectual property.

First, to support early rights acquisition for new technologies, KIPO plans to expand the priority trial targets for materials, parts, and equipment companies to include invalidation trials and scope of rights confirmation trials where these companies are parties as priority trial subjects.

Additionally, design registration applications utilizing technologies related to the 4th Industrial Revolution such as artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things will be included in the priority examination targets.

As a measure to enhance public convenience in the intellectual property service sector, a related system will be established to allow trademark applications via devices such as smartphones, and the application reception time will be expanded from 24 hours on weekdays and Saturdays to 24 hours every day, to be applied from March.

In particular, the partial design examination real-time processing will be expanded to full examination, and the examination period, which took about 60 days last year, will be shortened to 10 days from this year through real-time examination. Also, when applying for patents and utility models, applicants will be able to submit papers and research notes as they are without editing, without submitting specifications in the prescribed format, simplifying the process (February).

From this year, the startup patent priority examination application fee will also be reduced from 200,000 KRW to 60,000 KRW (70% discount). Furthermore, if banks execute intellectual property financing such as intellectual property secured loans for SMEs holding patent rights, 50% of the registration fee will be discounted, simultaneously expanding financial support for startups and alleviating the burden on financial institutions.

Along with this, KIPO will focus on supporting technology fields of regionally specialized industries for promising regional export companies to lay the foundation for growth into global intellectual property star companies. To this end, KIPO plans to expand the scale of support for fostering global intellectual property star companies from 15 billion KRW for 570 companies last year to 17 billion KRW for 700 companies this year, and also plans to add examination response costs and registration fees to the overseas application costs (2019) within the support scope.

Park Yong-joo, spokesperson for KIPO, said, "We will actively and proactively respond to the rapidly changing intellectual property environment to ensure that our intellectual property system becomes a nutrient that fosters innovative growth in the era of the 4th Industrial Revolution."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.