1. KIPO will start hiring a patent examiner specialized in semiconductors.
- KIPO will carry out an additional personnel expansion recruitment in the second half of next year.
KIPO opens recruitment of a patent examiner for a professional term system, for the support in the semiconductor and display fields where the competition for technological hegemony has been fierce.
The first step has been taken to hire a patent examiner for a professional term system in the semiconductor field attracting attention from inside and outside.
This is to provide a rapid and accurate examination service and to prevent professional manpower from being leaked abroad by hiring technical experts having rich field experience in the semiconductor and display fields as patent examiners for a professional term system. The relevant matters were announced on November 14, 2022.
Since a patent examiner for a professional term system to be hired based on the field technical expertise is a state public official equivalent to level 5, the examiner has no retirement age unlike a general public official. As such an examiner is recognized for a private carrier, (s)he is high paid more than a 5th grade general public official who is hired as a new employee.
A total of 30 will be employed in a total of 6 detailed fields (① semiconductor design and device field, ② semiconductor exposure and deposition field, ③ semiconductor etching, cleaning and substrate field, ④ semiconductor assembly, inspection and packing field, ⑤ semiconductor material field, and ⑥ display specialized technology field), by considering the numberof patent applications, etc.
This recruitment gives special preference to work experience in the relevant fields, to be a private expert having extensive field experience.
Reflecting the national task of ‘securing a super gap in the semiconductor field’ and the current government’s tone of a conservative manpower management, KIPO will first hire 30 patent examiners specialized in semiconductors this year. KIPO has a plan to additionally hire more examiners next year by looking at the performance.
2. The efficiency of research and development (R&D) increases by analyzing patent bigdata.
- A working meeting was held for the activation of the connection of patent bigdata and R&D.
KIPO held a working meeting with the people in charge of R&D, to prepare a plan to activate the utilization of patent bigdata to increase the R&D investment efficiency.
To support in establishing the governmental and private R&D investment directions since 2019, KIPO has carried out a project to support a patent bigdata-based industrial innovation by analyzing about 500 million patent big data worldwide to discover promising technology and to establish R&D innovation strategies to be provided to the relevant agencies.
This working meeting was to share with the R&D dedicated agencies the progress situation of ‘patent bigdata analysis’ (which is currently carried out) on the major industry and technology fields and to discuss a plan to activate the connection between the governmental and private R&D policy and the patent bigdata analysis and to activate the cooperation among the agencies.
Regarding the progress situation of the patent bigdata analysis, 120 promising technologies were discovered in the 5 carbon neutrality fields (green energy, low-carbon industry, eco-friendly (clean) mobility, energy efficiency, and carbon capture, utilization and storage), to be provided to the R&D agencies (in 2021), and discovering promising technologies has been carried forward in the 9 fields including digital health care, smart manufacturing, etc. (in 2022).
The R&D dedicated agencies are 7 agencies including Korea Institute of Science & Technology Evaluation and Planning (KISTEP) and Korea Evaluation Institute of Industrial Technology (KEIT) among others, and Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
A spokesperson of KIPO said, “since the strategic utilization value of patent information has increased every day in the era of deglobalization due to the competition for technology hegemony, resource protection, etc., KIPO will positively collect the opinions from the R&D dedicated agencies and communicate with them such that patent bigdata can be better used when planning R&D.”
3. It becomes easy and convenient to search a microorganism patent and file a microorganism-related patent application.
- An integrated management system of patent microorganism information has been built.
KIPO announced that an online system to integrate and manage the patent microorganism-related information by online has been built and the full service started from November 21, 2022.
In April, KIPO remarkably simplified the microorganism deposit and furnishing procedures to solve the inconvenience in the process of filing a patent application for a microorganism invention and furnishing a microorganism. Now KIPO developed the integrated management system of patent microorganism information to support the improvement of the relevant system. The simplified relevant procedures were revisions to Article 2 of Enforcement Decrees of the Korean Patent Act, Article 23 of Enforcement Regulations of the same Act, and the forms of Attachment Nos. 14 and 19.
As the integrated management system of patent microorganism information has been built, KIPO and 4 microorganism deposit agencies are able to share, in real time, the microorganism deposit and furnishing information through the application programming interface (API), and an applicant is able to file an application without submitting a copy of a microorganism deposit certificate and a person who wants to be furnished with a deposited microorganism is able to directly request the deposit agency for furnishing the microorganism, without any separate certificate.
In addition, the ‘특허로 (www.patent.go.kr)’ has been reorganized to omit the submission of a deposit certificate when filing a patent application and to enable an online request to prove qualification for furnishing a microorganism. The function has been improved enabling a search and view of the lumped patent microorganism-related information through KIPRIS which is a patent search system. The deposit microorganism information service is provided at 특허로 (https://www.patent.go.kr/smart/jsp/kiponet/if/ap/micro/MicroDpstHelp.do#gnb), and the search service of the microorganism deposit information is available at KIPRIS (http://kpat.kipris.or.kr/kpat/remocon/etcPat/etcPatFrame.jsp).
4. The Republic of Korea, China and Japan join in IP human resource development.
- A 13th meeting of the heads of Korea-China-Japan IP training institutions was held.
On November 16, 2022, International Intellectual Property Training Institute (IIPTI) of KIPO held an online meeting of the heads of Korea-China-Japan IP training institutes including IIPTI, China Intellectual Property Training Center (CIPTC) and National Center for Industrial Property Information and Training (INPIT).
This 13th meeting hosted by Korea was for the training institutes in charge of Korean, Chinese and Japanese IP educations to share the opinions on IP educations and the work secret, etc. and to discuss the cooperative plan for IP education development.
In the meeting, the opinions were exchanged regarding the current issue of various IP education cooperation, such as ▲ conversion to in-person education in preparation for post COVID-19, ▲ Cooperation in IP education for Korean and foreign companies, ▲ mutual use of digital content, ▲ sharing of new education curriculum.
This year, the participants shared the issues which might rise when the non-face-to-face education is reconverted to a face-to-face education according to the situation of COVID-19 and exchanged, in depth, the opinions on a plan to use the secrets of non-face-to-face education activated due to COVID-19.
5. The number of patents and patent applications relating to the convergence technology, artificial intelligence (AI) + alpha (α), increased by 3.7 times over 10 years.
- The number of patent applications related to the 4th industrial revolution increased by 3.7 times over 10 years.
- AI and bio health care have led the 4th industrial revolution.
KIPO published the analysis of the information of patent applications and registration in the 4th industrial revolution technology fields for the last 10 years (2012~the first half of 2022).
This analysis relates to the patent trends of the 8 major technology of the 4th industrial revolution, including AI, digital health care, etc. and the 11 fields where the technologies in different fields are converged, to check the directions and tendencies of the major technology development in the 4th industrial revolution field.
The major technologies in the 4th industrial revolution are AI, bigdata, Internet of Things (IoT), digital health care, biomarker, intelligent robot, self-driving, 3D printing.
The number of the 4th industrial revolution-related patent applications has continued to increase and the rate of increase has also been faster.
The total of the applications for the 4th industrial revolution-related technologies increased from 6,710 in 2012 to 24,732 in 2021 by 3.7 times over 10 years. This shows a high growth rate, compared to the number of the total applications filed during the same period, which increased by 1.2 times (from 200,000 in 2012 to 240,000 in 2021.
Especially, since the number of the applications in this field, which had increased by 11.5% every year, increased by 21% from 2017, it confirms that the rate of increase has become greater.
Among the major technologies in the 4th industrial revolution fields, an increase in the number of the applications in the AI and digital health care fields has been notable.
The number of the application in the AI field increased by an annual average of 41% (from 384 in 2012 to 8,416 in 2021), and the growth rate of the applications filed in the digital health care field was also high, as 16%, (from 1,816 in 2012 to 6,683 in 2021).
Among the 4th industrial revolution technology-related applications filed in 2021, the percentages of these two technologies were highest (AI with 34% and bio health care with 27%), indicating that the AI and bio fields led the 4th industrial revolution.
In the AI field, the number of the applications filed in the ‘visual intelligence’ field was remarkable. The number of the applications relating to the visual intelligence was 56.8% (17,503 applications) and its annual average increase rate was high at 43.3%. Visual intelligence is the field where the industrial usability, such as self-driving, etc., is high and the social interest, such as image creation AI, etc., is high.
In the AI service field where the AI technology is applied to real life, the number of the relevant application was only 20 in 2012 but increased by 69.6% every year to reach 2,356 in 2021. As the AI technology has developed, the trend of technology development has been changing.
In the digital health care field, the increase in the number of the applications relating to the medical/health information processing field was distinguished as about 5 times over the last 5 years (2017~2021). Since the major products in this field, the wearable device market, such as smart watch, etc., is expected to continue to grow, an increase in the number of these applications is considered to continue for the time being. The wearable market is expected to grow by an annual average of 18.0% (from 116.2 billion dollars in 2021 to 265.4 billion dollars in 2026) (MarketsAndMarkets).
The number of the applications filed in the convergence technology field increased by 22 times over the same period (from 95 in 2012 to 2,103 in 2021), surpassing the growth rate in the number of the total applications filed in the 4th industrial revolution technology fields. This is considered such that convergence, which is a feature of the 4th industrial revolution technology, has been intensified.
Specifically, the trend that AI technology converges a different technology has stood out. Among 11 convergence technologies, all of the technologies converging with AI grew by more than 40%, an annal average and the number of the applications relating to those converging with AI increased by 41 times over 10 years.
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