Priority Examination for Patent Applications Related to COVID-19 Vaccines

The Korean Intellectual Property Office plans to designate patent applications related to COVID-19 vaccines as priority examinations for one year starting from the 23rd of this month, supporting domestic vaccine companies in acquiring patent rights quickly. The photo is unrelated to the article. Source=Yonhap News

[Asia Economy (Daejeon) Reporter Jeong Il-woong] The Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) will prioritize the examination of patent applications related to COVID-19 vaccines. Priority examination is a system that allows applications meeting certain criteria to be examined ahead of others upon the applicant's request.

KIPO announced on the 22nd that from the 23rd of this month, for one year, patent applications in the field of COVID-19 vaccines will be designated as subjects for priority examination.

The designation for priority examination was made to support the development and production of domestic COVID-19 vaccines. The core objective is to expedite the patent examination of technologies developed domestically or related to vaccine production to help vaccine companies acquire patents quickly.

The targets include ▲ patent applications related to COVID-19 vaccines supported by national research and development projects ▲ patent applications from vaccine companies producing or preparing for production or clinical trials of COVID-19 vaccines domestically.

This priority examination designation for COVID-19 vaccine development and production technologies is also the first case utilizing the newly introduced system of ex officio priority examination designation.

Previously, KIPO amended the Enforcement Decree of the Patent Act (Article 9 of the Patent Act on subjects of priority examination) to establish a system allowing the Commissioner of KIPO to designate and announce priority examination subjects ex officio, enabling flexible and rapid responses to emergencies such as COVID-19.

Through this, KIPO expects that companies developing domestic COVID-19 vaccines with government R&D funding or companies producing or conducting clinical trials of vaccines domestically will be able to obtain patent rights more easily and quickly in the future.

For example, receiving priority examination allows patent examination within two months, which can advance the usual patent examination period by up to one year.

As of last month, a total of 16 patent applications related to COVID-19 vaccines from domestic companies currently conducting clinical trials have been confirmed. KIPO expects that as domestic vaccine development accelerates with government support, the number of eligible applicant companies will significantly increase.

Kim Ji-su, Director of the Patent Examination Planning Bureau at KIPO, stated, “We will do our utmost to support the development of domestic COVID-19 vaccines and the expansion of domestic production to establish a global vaccine hub.” He added, “Above all, KIPO will spare no support for target companies to ensure that the Korea-US Global Vaccine Partnership proceeds smoothly through expanded research cooperation alongside domestic production of COVID-19 vaccines.”

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