"260 Million Patent Data Built and Opened... KIPO Supports Corporate Technology Competitiveness"

by Jeong Ilwoong

Published 22 Jul.2021 11:00(KST)

Provided by the Korean Intellectual Property Office

[Asia Economy (Daejeon) Reporter Jeong Il-woong] #Company A, whose main business is vaccine and new drug development, is recently exploring entry into local vaccine markets in India and Brazil. However, the company itself finds it difficult to analyze vaccine-related patents in each country, increasing uncertainty about market entry. To resolve litigation risks (patent disputes) upon market entry, patent analysis in the respective countries must be conducted beforehand. On the other hand, enormous costs and limitations in analytical capabilities pose obstacles to the company's market entry.

On the 22nd, the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) announced that it will promote the construction and opening of patent data to assist domestic companies like Company A that hesitate to enter overseas markets due to similar concerns.

On the same day, KIPO reported the “Patent Data Utilization and Dissemination Expansion Plan” to the 5th Data Special Committee of the 4th Industrial Revolution Committee and discussed key tasks.

The Patent Data Utilization and Dissemination Expansion Plan focuses on establishing infrastructure to activate the use of patent information by building and opening customized patent data tailored to individual companies, industries, and government based on 12 tasks.

The core is to newly build and publicly open approximately 260 million high value-added patent data that can be analyzed from technological, market, and industrial strategy perspectives, customized for each demand group.

To this end, KIPO plans to first expand the construction of “citation information,” one of the key indicators for patent value evaluation in the corporate sector, to enhance the value of registered patents.

Citation information refers to assigning higher value to patents that cite many previously filed and registered patents during the examination process of patent registration. It is a concept similar to including references in academic papers.

Additionally, detailed data for value evaluation indicators will be produced and disseminated so that companies and financial institutions can directly utilize them in the valuation process without separate data processing.

From the industry perspective, a consistent analysis system for patent trends by industrial sector will be established, and a core talent pool will be built to support the enhancement of technological competitiveness of industries and companies.

A linkage table between the Korean Standard Industrial Classification (KSIC) and the Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC) will be created to enable immediate analysis of patent trends by specific industries, thereby eliminating inefficiencies in extracting and selecting patents for analysis.

Furthermore, by interlinking inventor information of patents with researcher information such as academic paper authors, key technical personnel information by industry will be selected to support national human resource development policies and industry-academia-research joint projects.

At the government level, KIPO plans to expand the acquisition of patent data targeting emerging countries with high growth potential and additionally secure patent rights transfer data from major countries to provide a foundation for detailed analysis of global patent flows.

Park Jong-joo, Director of the Information Customer Support Bureau at KIPO, explained, “Existing patent information has focused on supporting patent administrative procedures such as examination and trials. However, the newly constructed patent data will place emphasis on providing a foundation for strategic use of patent data across industrial and corporate activities, from national policy formulation to corporate research and development (R&D).”

He added, “KIPO will help our companies effectively utilize high value-added patent data to enhance technological competitiveness and expand global market entry in advanced industrial fields.”