[Asia Exclusive] Lee In-sil, Commissioner of the Korean Intellectual Property Office: "Priority Examination for Advanced Technology Fields like Semiconductors... Examination Period Reduced to 1/5"

Goal to Recruit About 200 Retired Civilians
Measures to Enhance Expertise and Speed
Free from Technology Leakage Issues
When Reemployed by Companies

Strategic Assets Essential for National Security
Focused Support for Trade Secret Protection Systems
Including Vulnerable Partners to Technology Leakage

Patent Office Commissioner Lee In-sil held an interview with Asia Economy in his office at the Government Daejeon Complex Patent Office in June, discussing the Patent Office's policies and strategies to secure national competitiveness in the era of technological hegemony. / Photo by Kim Hyun-min kimhyun81@

[Interview = Lee Kyung-ho, Head of Social Affairs Department · Organized by Jeong Il-woong, Reporter] Lee In-sil, Commissioner of the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO), announced plans to shorten the patent examination time for semiconductors to within 3 months, reducing it to one-fifth of the current duration, in order to secure an advantage in the global semiconductor hegemony war.

KIPO has decided to hire about 200 retired personnel from the private sector, including those with semiconductor expertise, to enhance the professionalism of patent examinations and shorten the examination period.

In addition to semiconductors, KIPO will strategically support research and development in fields leading the 4th Industrial Revolution such as displays, artificial intelligence (AI), bio, and robotics to strengthen intellectual property competitiveness.

To support patent disputes for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), ventures, and startups with weak intellectual property protection, collaboration between lawyers and patent attorneys will be encouraged. Commissioner Lee expects that if KIPO’s plan proceeds smoothly, South Korea will surpass Japan and rise to the world’s third-largest patent filer by 2027.

- How much will semiconductor patent examination time be reduced?

▲ As semiconductors have become a global hot topic, rapid acquisition of patent rights has emerged as a key issue in the industry. Securing patent rights for foundational technologies alongside their development has become crucial. To this end, KIPO plans to apply a prioritized examination system starting with the semiconductor sector and extending to advanced technology fields such as AI, bio, and secondary batteries, enabling Korean companies to swiftly secure patent rights. The prioritized examination shortens the usual examination period of about 12.7 months to 2.5 months. KIPO plans to apply this system to the semiconductor field starting November this year and gradually expand the scope.

- What is the plan for utilizing retired private sector personnel?

▲ The number of patent examiners should increase proportionally with national economic growth. However, limited national finances and fixed government personnel quotas pose practical difficulties in increasing examiners. Therefore, KIPO intends to address manpower shortages and enhance the professionalism and speed of examinations by deploying retired private sector experts in various fields to the examination process. Utilizing retired private personnel is also expected to help resolve the recent social issue of overseas technology leakage. To this end, KIPO is currently negotiating with the Ministry of the Interior and Safety to recruit about 200 retired personnel annually. The goal is to enable actual personnel deployment starting in the first half of next year through these negotiations.

- What are the recruitment methods and incentives?

▲ Since the number of government officials cannot be increased arbitrarily, retired private personnel will be recruited as fixed-term government employees. KIPO is considering utilizing retired private personnel with working periods aligned to government retirement ages, such as 4+4 or 5+5 years. Although fixed-term employees hold government status, pension and related matters need to be handled separately. However, since the examination work of retired private personnel is a continuation of their research activities performed while in office, this reduces the burden of examination tasks. Above all, they can take pride in being free from technology leakage issues they would face if re-employed by domestic or foreign companies and in being able to work as national government officials.

- What is the strategy to avoid falling behind in the technology hegemony competition?

▲ As of 2020, South Korea is recognized as a strong intellectual property nation, ranking 4th worldwide in patent applications and 1st in standard patents. However, there is a structural problem of underperformance in research and development (R&D) relative to investment scale. For this reason, to maintain and strengthen its status as an intellectual property powerhouse, South Korea must ensure that R&D outcomes translate into innovation drivers. This means creating valuable patents through R&D and activating the linkage for patent transactions and commercialization. To this end, KIPO will strategically support patent-based R&D (IP-R&D) in 4th industrial technology fields such as semiconductors, displays, secondary batteries, hydrogen, AI, and robotics, helping domestic industries secure numerous foundational and core patents and gain global competitiveness.

- Technology leakage prevention is also important in the era of economic security

▲ Due to the technology hegemony struggle, core technologies like semiconductors have emerged as strategic assets necessary for national security beyond industrial perspectives. As competition intensifies among countries, cases of recruiting key personnel, industrial espionage, cyber hacking, and attempts to leak trade secrets have increased. From 2017 to February this year, 99 cases of industrial technology leakage attempts were detected, and if these technologies had leaked overseas, the estimated damage would have been about 22 trillion KRW (according to the National Intelligence Service). Accordingly, the government approved the ‘Unfair Competition Prevention and Trade Secret Protection Implementation Plan’ at the Foreign Economic Ministers’ Meeting chaired by the Deputy Prime Minister last month. Under this plan, KIPO will focus on supporting trade secret protection systems for weak links such as large corporations’ partners and universities/research institutes, and strengthen protection of Korean technologies by expanding legal support for Korean companies overseas in case of technology leakage.

- What are the measures to protect intellectual property rights of companies expanding overseas?

▲ KIPO focuses on protecting companies’ intellectual property not only domestically but also overseas. It is expanding the dispatch of patent attach?s to regions with high risks of intellectual property infringement and market importance, and establishing ‘Overseas Intellectual Property Centers (IP-DESK)’ in regions with high demand for Korean companies’ expansion to support prevention of intellectual property damage locally. KIPO is also striving to create a global intellectual property environment favorable to Korean companies. In particular, KIPO aims to expand the presence of Korean experts in the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) to help form international intellectual property norms advantageous to Korean companies as part of its overseas protection strategy.

- What is your opinion on joint representation in patent litigation?

▲ Major countries such as the UK, European Union (EU), Japan, and China already recognize patent attorneys’ representation in litigation to enable their domestic companies to respond swiftly and efficiently to technology hegemony competition. Due to lawyers’ lack of technical and patent expertise, legal consumers have no choice but to rely on large law firms that hire patent attorneys, but high fees cause most SMEs and ventures to give up litigation. According to the 2021 Judicial Yearbook, the average duration of first-instance patent infringement litigation was 605.5 days when only lawyers represented the case. In contrast, when patent attorneys also represent invalidation lawsuits, the period is 265.1 days, significantly shorter. Companies hope to shorten litigation periods by utilizing patent attorneys, who know the key technologies and patents best and have represented patent trials and invalidation lawsuits, also in infringement litigation. Until now, large law firms monopolized patent litigation, but with this system, small law firms and young lawyers can also perform patent litigation together with patent attorneys.

- Please introduce the vision of becoming one of the world’s top three patent powers

▲ As of 2020, the gap in patent application volume with 3rd-ranked Japan (288,472 cases) is 61,713 cases, and by 2027, this gap is expected to narrow to about 20,000 cases. The goal is to catch up with this policy. Rising to the world’s 3rd place in patent applications means South Korea will become the world’s 3rd largest technology power. The increase of 20,000 patent applications by 2027 is also expected to raise the economic growth rate by 0.16% (about 3.3 trillion KRW). Munich University in Germany analyzed that a 1 percentage point increase in patent applications raises per capita GDP growth by 0.65%. KIPO will concretize its core tasks through consultations with related ministries and agencies and proceed without setbacks through close communication and cooperation with academia, industry, and research institutions.

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