1. Intellectual property (IP) right trend during the second quarter of 2013
□ Application trend
The number of applications for IP rights filed during the second quarter of 2013 was 108,882, showing a 10.3% increase in comparison with the same period in 2012.
By rights, the numbers of the patent, design and trademark applications respectively increased by 7.9%, 3.9% and 18.5% and the number of the utility model applications decreased by 4.7%.
By applicants, the number of patent applications increased by 10.1% for Korean applicants and 1.0% for foreign applicants.
□ Registration trend
The number of registrations for IP rights during the second quarter of 2013 was 68,303, showing an 11.6% increase in comparison with the same period in 2012.
By rights, the numbers of patents and trademarks respectively increased by 4.8% and 31.3%. By applicants, the number of registrations increased by 12.1% for Korean applicants and 9.5% for foreign applicants.
□ Examination and trial trend
The number of requested examinations was 40,942, showing a 1.7% increase in comparison with the same period in 2012.
The number of examinations for patent applications was 38,528 with a 2.4% increase compared with the same period in 2012 and the number of examinations for utility model applications was 2,414 with an 8.0% decrease.
The number of requested trials was 3,446, showing a 16.7% decrease in comparison with the same period in 2012 and the number of handled trials was 3,575, showing an 11.8% decrease in comparison with the same period in 2012.
2. The number of patent applications related to an efficient energy management system of a building has rapidly increased
Regarding an energy-saving effect by an energy management system of a building, it is reported that energy consumption and costs in the building with the energy management system were reduced by 40%, compared with a building without the system.
According to the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO), the number of the relevant patent applications which was only 16 for the 5 years from 2004 to 2008 has increased to a total of 168 since 2009, showing an increase by more than 10 times compared with the previous years.
The relevant technology which was filed in the earlier applications was for a method of simply controlling only the power use of the entire building. The technology now is a method of automatically controlling diverse energy using facilities by collecting and analyzing various data within the building, enabling more systematic and efficient management.
Based on the current state of the applications filed during the last 5 years by applicants, more than half of the total of the relevant applications (52%) were filed by companies. Thus, companies’ interest in the energy management system and their technological development activities are considered as being active.
3. KIPO carries forward a project associated with IP finance for an excellent IP company among medium/small companies
The project to support the strategic commercialization of a patent technology has achieved good results. This project is to help in commercializing or supporting/attracting funds by using advanced patent technology owned by a medium/small company.
This project is to support a diversity of customized commercialization, thereby fully carrying forward the commercialization and raising funds by using the advanced patent technology owned by a medium/small company. This project consists of 3 unit programs: ▲ supporting the strategies to use IP ▲ supporting the evaluation of patent technology ▲ supporting the evaluation of patent technology associated with finance.
The rate of using patents by the companies as supported based on 2012 was 81.3%, which was far higher than 56.5%, the average rate by domestic companies. The level of satisfaction was also 87.6%, showing that the results of performing the project were very satisfying.
KIPO has a plan to support a total of about 350 companies this year through this projection.
4. The number of applications related to a computer virtualization technology has rapidly increased for the latest 3 years
As cloud computing has spread, the virtualization technology making it possible to easily use IT infrastructure has received attention.
If the computer virtualization technology is used, it is possible to use only one computer like a number of computers run in different OSs (window, linux, etc.).
The web storage, such as ucloud, N drive, etc., is a service provided by the storage virtualization technology. In this web storage, a user has her/his own storage space in the internet, to directly upload the pictures (s)he takes using a mobile phone or to see them anytime.
By detailed techniques, 45% of the total of the relevant applications were related to the computer server visualization technique, 14% were related to the storage visualization technique and 41% were related to the application service technique such as cloud computing, etc.
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