Industrial Property Rights Trial 'Unfair Actor' to Bear Full Trial Costs

[Asia Economy (Daejeon) Reporter Jeong Il-woong] If unfair acts occur during the industrial property rights trial process, the unfair party will henceforth bear the full cost of the trial.

The Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) announced on the 25th that it will revise and implement the "Notice on the Determination of Industrial Property Rights Trial Costs" with this content.

The revised notice specifies unfair acts as ▲ cases where a decision is received based on rights obtained through false or fraudulent acts or where fraudulent acts are discovered during the trial ▲ cases where evidence was intentionally or grossly negligently withheld but later submitted to the court resulting in a win.

In particular, in such cases, the unfair party must bear the entire trial costs including the trial request fee, attorney fees, preparation fees for the request and other documents and drawings, regardless of the outcome, and must also pay all costs incurred by the opposing party in the trial.

At this time, the opposing party of the unfair actor can claim attorney fees up to the actual hiring cost (maximum 7.4 million KRW).

Previously, attorney fees could only be claimed within the trial request fee (several hundred thousand KRW), so even if harmed by unfair acts, the injured party had to bear hundreds of thousands of KRW in attorney hiring costs without being able to recover trial costs.

However, through the revision of the notice, victims who suffer damages due to intentional or gross negligence unfair acts will be able to claim trial costs at actual expenses, enabling the Korean Intellectual Property Office to foresee the inducement of sincere and fair trials.

Joo Young-sik, President of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, said, "For accurate and fair trials, it is most important to prevent unfair acts during the trial," and added, "We will continue to respond firmly through active administration such as legal amendments against acts that hinder trials with manipulated data or false claims."

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