1. The Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO)’s services are available anytime and anywhere by a cloud service
- KIPO’s cloud service will be expanded to a home working place
After opening the cloud service in 2012, KIPO will expand the cloud service to all remote work places including home working places in 2013.
To safely protect nationally important scientific and technical properties including undisclosed patent documents, etc., KIPO has applied the cloud service in a desktop virtual manner. Only a screen is visible in a personal computer and data downloading is impossible, so that the leakage of work data is fundamentally blocked.
In addition, KIPO is to expand the cloud service to home working places in 2013. Through the cloud service, the difficulties of home-working are solved and home-workers can enjoy the benefits of a smart office as much as they want. In deed as well as in name, we can say that a big step has been taken for a smart work era.
One of the biggest difficulties of home-working is that a home-worker cannot bring work data out of the office. Due to this trouble, there have been a lot of difficulties in continuing to perform work at home. However, in the future, it is possible to continuously perform the work in process by connecting to the cloud service at home in the same manner as at the office.
2. The Republic of Korea and Japan will strengthen the cooperation in patent examination and trials
- An Asia cooperation base is to be built to prevent international patent disputes
The number of patent applications filed in the three East Asia countries, the Republic of Korea, China and Japan, has greatly passed the number of patent applications filed with the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and the European Patent Office (EPO).
The number of the applications filed with KIPO, the State Intellectual Property Office of the People’s Republic of China (SIPO) and the Japanese Patent Office (JPO) in 2011 is about one million applications, passing the number of the applications filed with USPTO and EPO which is about six hundred thousand applications (based on 2011).
On December 18, 2012, Tuesday, the Commissioner of KIPO held the 24th meeting of the Commissioners of KIPO and JPO in Tokyo, Japan. They agreed to make an effort together to carry forward the joint research and cooperation in the patent examination and trial areas of the two countries where industrial and patent systems are similar to each other and to form the international patent order focused on Asia, thereby preventing international patent disputes.
In the examination area, the Commissioners of both KIPO and JPO agreed to expand the joint prior art search project regarding the same patent application filed in the two countries, which has been operated in two (2) technical fields yearly since 2000, to four (4) technical fields, seeking the harmonization of the patent examination practical work. The expansion of the joint prior art search project is expected to contribute in minimizing the discordance of examination results caused by the differences between the Korea-Japan patent examination-related systems and practical work.
3. The protection of trademark rights of the people is from KIPRIS
- Trademark searches are easily and accurately conducted based on data having no errors
There is good news to companies, etc. that have had many problems because of insufficient trademark information. This means that it is possible to search/analyze the relevant information necessary to file a trademark application and to protect a trademark, without omission, by a single search. In addition, KIPO’s examiners are thus able to more efficiently perform the examination.
In the past when the trademark data were built, parts of trademark data were provided in poor images due to the technical limitation of scanners, etc., having low quality. Accordingly, about 400 civil complaint cases to request corrections were submitted every year.
KIPO verified a total of 170,000 trademarks with naked eyes and re-digitalized (re-electronized) about 100,000 trademarks, which were confirmed as containing errors, by using a high-resolution (300dpi) color scanner. Further, all errors were removed through the multi-level verification. Organized trademark data is to be reflected to the Korea intellectual Property Rights Information Service (KIPRIS) and to be availabe from January 2013.
As representative cases of the trademark image being replaced at this time are where the original is in color but it has been provided in white and black, the identification of a trademark is unclear, or an image is partially broken.
4. Thirty (30) promising technologies enabling to secure original/core patents
- For the first time, KIPO announced thirty (30) promising technologies in the three (3) industrial fields, bio, mobile telecommunication and robot, based on the patent analysis
KIPO announced that they selected the ten (10) future promising technologies in each of the three (3) industrial fields, bio, robot and mobile telecommunication, based on the patent analysis of these industrial fields which was conducted by the government R&D authorities including the Ministry of Knowledge Economy (MKE), the Ministry of Health and Welfare (MHW), the Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs (MLTMA) and the Korea Communications Commission (KCC).
The thirty (30) promising technologies in the three (3) industrial fields were selected through an in-depth analysis, i.e., ▲analysis of Korean patent competitiveness, ▲analysis of patent dispute information, ▲analysis of patent obstacles by technologies and applicants, and ▲analysis of blank patent regions after the relevant authorities positively participated and found hundred (100) candidate promising technologies. KIPO provided the relevant authorities with the thirty (30) future promising technologies to be used for the government R&D project plan for 2013.
MKE carrying forward the robot field reflected the results of this project to eight (8) of nine (9) R&D projects planned in the robot field. KCC in the mobile communication field and MHW and MLTMA in the bio field will positively reflect the future promising technologies in a patent view when evaluating 2013 projects.
A person in charge of the robot industrial field under MKE said, “we could evaluate projects in a more objective point of view through the future promising technologies selected from the patent view, so that these were helpful in planning the R&D projects in the robot field.”
Starting in the three (3) industrial fields in 2012, KIPO plans to select in the future the promising R&D projects in the patent view in a total of eighteen (18) industrial fields.
In 2013, KIPO will evaluate future promising technologies by selecting four (4) industrial fields among the fifteen (15) industrial fields except for the three (3) industrial fields being carried forward in 2012, based on the relevant R&D authorities’ and popular demand.
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