KIPO Commissioner Kim Yong-rae: "Recreating the Glory of the US and UK Industrial Revolutions through Korea's Leadership in the Digital Era"

Commissioner Kim Yong-rae of the Korean Intellectual Property Office recently emphasized the role of the office in the "transition to the digital age" in an interview with Asia Economy. Photo by Korean Intellectual Property Office

[Asia Economy (Daejeon) Reporter Jeong Il-woong] “Just as the United States and the United Kingdom led the Industrial Revolution in the past, now our country will focus institutional capabilities so that we can dominate the world with advanced intellectual property systems and policies in the digital transformation era.” Kim Yong-rae, Commissioner of the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) (52·photo), recently expressed his vision for future agency operations in an interview with Asia Economy.

Commissioner Kim marked his 100th day in office on the 19th. During this period, he has presented the swift ‘transition to the digital era’ as an urgent task to be addressed.

This intention was also evident in his inaugural speech. In it, Commissioner Kim analyzed, “Modern society is facing changes and challenges such as the transition to a digital economy and the spread of protectionism, leading to a fundamental reshaping of the global industrial map as new products and services continuously emerge.”

He added, “The core strategic means to respond to these changes and challenges is none other than intellectual property,” emphasizing, “To respond to new changes, it is important to establish a virtuous cycle structure of ‘creation-protection-utilization of intellectual property’ that continuously generates competitiveness and value for our companies.”

As the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the digital transformation of the global economy and industries, intellectual property has emerged as a safeguard for maintaining the competitiveness of core technologies and brands. For the same reason, countries worldwide are competitively advancing efforts to protect intellectual property, clarifying the role of KIPO in this context.

In line with this, KIPO is currently promoting the revision of related laws to address intellectual property protection issues arising from the production, transmission, and utilization of data?key assets in the digital era?as well as the question of granting rights for inventions and creations by artificial intelligence.

Additionally, KIPO is strengthening infrastructure by expanding access to 470 million intellectual property data records and building an innovative patent big data platform utilizing artificial intelligence, placing greater emphasis on helping companies develop new business models.

In particular, Commissioner Kim foresees that patent big data analysis will not only enhance research and development (R&D) outcomes but also enable the setting of future patent policy directions. He defined patent big data as “the research and development results and a concentration of advanced technical information obtained through the dedicated efforts and investments of universities, research institutes, and companies worldwide for technological innovation,” reflecting the same perspective.

He explained further, “When national or corporate R&D investment increases, research activities in the relevant fields become more active, which leads to an increase in patent applications and the potential creation of excellent patents.” He added, “Conversely, by analyzing the quantity and quality of patent applications from specific countries or companies, we can infer R&D trends in various fields and, based on this, set directions and strategies for the domestic industry to focus on.”

He also highlighted the need to simultaneously address the ‘Korea R&D Paradox.’ Commissioner Kim pointed out, “Our country ranks first globally in both ‘R&D investment relative to GDP’ and ‘research personnel relative to population,’ yet the economic outcomes from R&D remain low, which has emerged as a structural and chronic problem.”

He stressed, “To solve this issue, it is urgent to establish a virtuous cycle of ‘creation-protection-utilization of intellectual property’ where valuable intellectual property is generated during the R&D process and its value is properly recognized in the market.”

He concluded, “KIPO will strive to maximize the use of patent big data across the domestic industry, complete the threefold goals of intellectual property activation and protection enhancement, and build a ‘system where the revenue generated from intellectual property exceeds the costs spent on creating it.’ As part of this, we will focus institutional capabilities on ensuring that patent analysis is evenly utilized throughout the entire national R&D process, thereby improving R&D efficiency and supporting the creation of numerous valuable intellectual properties.”

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