Nine Out of Ten Venture Companies Say On-Site Evidence Collection Needed in Patent Litigation

Joint Survey by the Korean Intellectual Property Office and Korea Venture Business Association
Limitations in Evidence Collection Under the Current System

Nine out of ten domestic venture companies believe that improvements are needed in the evidence collection system during patent litigation.

On July 21, the Korea Venture Business Association announced the results of a survey on the introduction of a "Korean-style evidence collection system" conducted among venture companies. This survey was jointly conducted by the Korea Venture Business Association and the Korean Intellectual Property Office from July 1 to July 8, with a total of 488 venture companies responding.

Among the responding companies, 15.2% (74 companies) reported having actually experienced patent infringement lawsuits. These companies cited "difficulty in collecting evidence" (73.0%) as the most significant challenge during litigation, followed by "prolonged litigation periods" (60.8%) and "excessive litigation costs" (59.5%).

In addition, more than half of all responding companies (54.9%) said that, due to a lack of evidence during patent infringement lawsuits, they had either given up or lost lawsuits, or, even when they won, suffered from low compensation for damages, either directly or indirectly.

Furthermore, 96.7% of responding companies stated that evidence of patent infringement is concentrated with the infringer, making it difficult for victims to obtain such evidence, and thus improvements to the evidence collection system are necessary to address this issue. In addition, 97.3% of responding companies expressed support for amending the Patent Act to improve the evidence collection system in order to resolve the problem of securing evidence in patent infringement lawsuits.

Lee Jeongmin, Secretary General of the Korea Venture Business Association, stated, "For venture companies whose competitiveness is based on technology, the protection of patents and trade secrets is directly linked to their survival," and added, "We will continue to work with the Korean Intellectual Property Office to improve the evidence collection system, both to ensure the legitimate protection of venture companies' rights in cases of technology infringement and to prevent technology theft."

Shin Sangkon, Director General of the Industrial Property Protection and Cooperation Bureau at the Korean Intellectual Property Office, said, "We will strive to ensure effective remedies for patent holders by improving the evidence collection system in patent infringement litigation, reflecting the results of this survey and the broad opinions of the industry."

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