1. KIPO will provide an information search service of international patent disputes
As patent disputes in some areas, such as smart phones, LED and etc., where Korean companies compete have become intense, from October this year the KIPO (Korean Intellectual Property Office) will provide an information search service (dispute information navigation) of international patent disputes which is customized for companies through the Korea Intellectual Property Protection Association.
The dispute information navigation provides the necessary information to predict and deal with international patent disputes which is comprehensively and systemically arranged to meet with situations that an individual company faces. When a company inputs its own information, such as its own products, countries for exportation, related patents and etc., a diversity of dispute information to meet with the conditions as input is provided.
The information to be mainly provided is as follows:
- trends of disputes, current states of activities of patent management companies (NPE: non-practicing entity), analysis data of lawsuit cases;
- systems related to foreign intellectual properties, cases of damages and/or countermeasures of companies advanced in foreign countries;
- current states of experts in foreign intellectual properties, and etc.
A user may directly modify the contents which may have errors or need to be enhanced because of the introduction of the ‘wiki’ concept in the system.
2. Procedures of filing a design application are changed to a one-stop
In the future, to file an application for a design to be applied to various application products/goods, an applicant may make one sheet for the application when filing an original application. To file an international application to enter the global market, the one-stop process is possible through KIPO.
The government held a cabinet meeting on August 23, 2011 and decided a ‘partial amendment bill to the Design Protection Law’ to improve the principle of ‘filing one application for one design’. According to this amendment, a creator may file an application by describing, in advance, various application products/goods as intended when creating a design, thereby relieving the necessity of filing an additional application during a process of developing future application products/goods or making required documents.
For example, various products/goods, such as an MP3 player, navigation, multimedia and etc., can be applied to one design of a mobile phone. In this case, these products/goods can be described in one sheet of an application.
Prior to the amendment, when a creator creates one design and applies the same design to different products/goods, the creator should make different applications by products/goods.
The government expected that the protection of a creator/designer’s right would be strengthened and the costs for filing an application(s) would be reduced due to this amendment.
3. ETRI (Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute) acquired the international standard of core technology of cognitive wireless communication
ETRI announced that the cognitive wireless communication technology developed by ETRI were adopted as the international standard.
ETRI had submitted to the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) a proposal of a draft standard reflecting five (5) patents related to TVWS cognitive wireless communication. (TVWS means a broadband of frequencies allocated to a TV broadcasting service but not used locally).
The cognitive wireless communication technology is to optimize the communication conditions to conform to surrounding environments.
For the first time in the world, ETRI developed a short-distance cognitive wireless communication test bed reflecting the relevant standard while proceeding with this standardization.
The leader of the cognitive wireless research team of ETRI said, “the cognitive wireless technology is the core technology of the mobile/wireless communication systems after the 4th generation mobile communications.”
4. Korean LED industry has been carrying forward a large-scaled lawsuit, to invalidate the LED patent of Nichia, a Japanese company
Korean LED (light-emitting diode) companies have jointly considered a wholesale counterattack to patent offensives of foreign companies. They are preparing a large-scaled lawsuit to originally block the patent offensives.
According to a (tentatively named) ‘national lawsuit group for Korea LED intellectual properties’ consisting of Korean LED companies, they will bring a trial for invalidation of patent against Nichia Chemical Industries.
The first target is all of the white LED patents that Nichia acquired in Korea. The national lawsuit group for Korea LED intellectual properties will also bring trials for invalidation in Japan.
Nichia Chemical Industries, which is the first LED company in world ranking, has had a patent dispute with Seoul Semiconductor, Inc. in 2007 for over three years. The national lawsuit group for Korea LED intellectual properties argued that Nichia has used unfair patent right(s).
It is very rare that the relevant industry jointly take a counterattack to the patent offensives of foreign companies. Specially, since the level of patent offensives of global LED companies against the Korean companies has been higher, there is much attention towards the development of this case.
The national lawsuit group for Korea LED intellectual properties is confident in winning the suit because recently the technology of Osram acquiring a patent(s) earlier than Nichia was invalidated in a suit with a Taiwanese company.
|
