|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
HOME > Resources >
Newsletters |
|
|
| |
|
|
Title |
|
KIPO started intensively monitoring the distribution of design infringement products (April ~ November).(News Letter No. 552) |
|
|
Author |
|
KH |
|
Post Date |
|
2025-05-16 |
|
|
Read |
|
188 |
|
Attach File |
|
- |
|
1. KIPO started intensively monitoring the distribution of design infringement products (April ~ November).
- KIPO spots fake designs online.
KIPO’s special judicial police announced the starting of intensive monitoring to eradicate design infringement and shape imitation in the online platform from April to November this year.
While the distribution of design imitating or infringing products removing a brand logo or trademark has increased, the monitoring has been conducted to protect a design right owner, to prevent consumer confusion and to raise awareness of design infringement crimes.
The special judicial police has a plan to monitor design infringing and shape imitating products, centered on the major online platforms. Among the detected cases, minor cases will be taken as the measures of warning and sale post deletion, etc. and serious cases will be linked to investigations for criminal punishment.
To this end, on April 11, 2025 KIPO had a meeting with major online platform operators at the Korea Intellectual Property Protection Agency (Gangnamgu, Seoul) to strengthen cooperation in taking measures to remove design infringement posts. In the future, KIPO will continue to expand cooperation with the other online platform companies to expand the target of cooperation with them.
As part of proactive administration, KIPO and Coupang had taken the measure of deleting 31 sale posts of design infringing products.
The director of the intellectual property protection and international cooperation bureau of KIPO said, “the practice of selling counterfeit products has been evolving into the way of imitating designs only by removing trademarks or logos, to avoid violating the trademark laws…Copying a design is also a crime and KIPO will continue to work to eradicate design crimes.”
2. KIPO published a commentary of a total of 57,388 public notice goods for 2025.
- A trademark application begins with accurate goods identification!
On April 3, 2025, KIPO announced to provide the latest commentary of 2025 amended public notice goods such that an applicant can more accurately identify goods to be protected when filing a trademark application.
The total of goods contained in this commentary is 57,388, including about 1,200 goods subject to the changes according to the 2025 version of the notice.
The commentary of the goods contains the public notice goods’ ►Korean and English names and classes, definitions and images, and ►properties (function/use, shape, material, etc.), providing its service at KIPO website (kipo.go.kr) and e-filing system (patent.go.kr).
The point to note in particular in this reorganized commentary is that it includes explanations of 128 representative names of wholesale and retail service industry which were not previously contained. The commentary on the wholesale and retail service industry covers tips for choosing more accurate public notice goods, together with definitions and properties thereof.
Public use of the recent commentary on public notice goods has increased significantly. The number of views of the goods commentary increased by 164%, from an average of 710 per month (4Q, 2023) to 1,875 (Q4, 2024), confirming that a number of applicants used the goods commentary effectively.
3. KIPO and Federation of Middle Market Enterprises of Korea (FMMEK) signed a business agreement and held an IP meeting.
- KIPO strengthens a ‘luxury patent’ creation in cooperation with FMMEK.
KIPO and FMMEK held an IP meeting for middle market companies and signed a business agreement to establish an environment for creating ‘luxury patents’.
This business agreement and the meeting were prepared for middle market companies that will grow into global leaders through patents to arm the innovative technologies and products as luxury patent strategies to seek to expand into the world and to shift an IP policy to focus on quality across the innovation ecosystem.
This business agreement contains the establishment of a cooperative system of the two organizations to create middle market companies’ luxury patents and to expand global reach, such as patent bigdata analysis, intellectual property R&D, intellectual property transfer and financing, overseas IP applications and dispute prevention•responses optimized for oversees expansion countries.
Especially, to change the perception of a ‘luxury patent’ which is an agent of innovation for a middle market company, KIPO and FMMEK decided to work together to establish a ‘luxury patent’ policy through regular communication as the interest and will of a chief executive officer (CEO) and a chief technology officer (CTO) of a middle market company are important.
5,868 middle market companies are only 1.4% of the total of companies, however, they are the core player of the Korean economy and the backbone of the industrial ecosystem which are responsible for 17.8% of Korea’s total exports (112.35 billion US Dollars), 15.2% of sales (984.3 trillion Korea Won) and 13.6% of employment (1.704 million people).
Since the trade deficit in the patent and utility model areas have continued to widen, together with the decline in middle market companies’ main technology level and patent applications, the importance of high-quality patents has been further highlighted for qualitative growth of middle market companies.
Notably, in the second Trump administration’s US-first trade policy, which was expected to take effect on the 2nd of April, intellectual property protection is considered an important factor. Therefore, for middle market companies with high exports in the US market which account for 56.8%, thorough preparation is required, from securing intellectual property rights for proprietary technologies and products to the possibility of intellectual property infringement in the value chain, including raw materials and parts, etc.
4. South Korea ranked 1st in growth rate of international patent applications (PCT) among the top 5 patent powers.
- The number of the international patent applications by South Korea continuously increased for 27 years, so South Korea ranked 4th in the world for 5 consecutive years.
- 2 Korean companies were among the top 5 companies and 4 Korean universities were included in the top 20 universities.
- South Korea also ranked 3rd in number of international design applications (Hague design system) in the world.
KIPO held a industrial property diagnostic organization meeting, to discuss ways to improve service quality of intellectual property research and analysis institutions, focusing on the system improvement plan prepared by KIPO.
According to World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the number of international patent applications around the world which decreased in 2023 rebounded after a year (273,900 applications, by 0.5% compared to the previous year), and both of the number of Madrid international trademark applications (65,000, by 1.2% compared to the previous year) and the number of Hague international design applications (9,454, by 10.3% compared to the previous year) increased, showing that companies around the world have been using the international application services a lot to protect and commercialize their products in overseas markets.
The number of the PCT international patent applications has continued increasing for 27 years since 1998, to be 23,851 (by 7.1% compared to the previous year) in 2024 and hold the 4th ranking following China, USA and Japan in the world for 5 consecutive years. Among the top 5, the number of the international patent applications by USA, Japan and Germany, except for South Korea and China (70,160, by 0.9% compared to the previous year), all decreased. Thus, and South Korea’s growth was the highest among the 5 patent powers in the world.
The top 5 companies in ranking the number of PCT international patent applications around the world included 2 South Korean companies, Samsung Electronics (2nd, 4,640 cases) and LG Electronics (4th, 2,083), 2 Chinese companies, Huawei (1st) and CATL (5th) and 1 US company, Qualcomm (3rd).
The number of the PCT international patent applications filed by Samsung Electronics increased by 18.2% compared to the previous year, recording the highest growth among the top 10 global companies, and LG Electronics also ranked 4th, up 2 places from 6th last year.
The top 20 universities in ranking in the number of PCT international patent applications around the world included 4 Korean universities, Seoul National University (5th), Hanyang University (15th), Korea University (18th) and Yonsei University (20th).
The number of the Madrid international trademark applications filed by Korean companies in 2024 was 2,346 (12.1% compared to the previous year), which ranked 9th in the world, the same as the previous year. As to the average growth rate for the past 5 years since 2020, South Korea was the only country with double-digit growth among the top 10.
The number of the Hague international design applications field in 2024 was 892 (8.1% compared to the previous year), which ranked 3rd (same as the previous year) in the world, following China and USA and followed by Germany (4th), France (5th), Switzerland (6th), Italy (7th) and Japan (8th), etc.
To support Korean companies that have expanded or are hoping to expand overseas in securing their international intellectual property rights and in mediating disputes, KIPO and WIPO headquarter staff who first dispatched to KIPO have continuously provided guidance on the related services as a manpower exchange program between KIPO and WIPO. For Korean companies that have expanded overseas, KIPO also has provided intellectual property consultations and legal advice services locally in 40 countries through 10 overseas intellectual property centers in 8 countries.
5. KIPO agreed on the advancement of patent classification (such as robots, electric vehicles and bio technology, etc.) and the patent classification using AI.
- KIPO advances the classification of patents on robots, electric vehicles and bio technology.
According to KIPO, a 28th meeting of IP5 working group on classification (hereinafter, referred to as the ‘IP5 WG1 meeting’) was held successfully for the revision of international patent classification (IPC).
In this meeting, an in-depth discussion was held on proposals and projects to revise 32 patent classifications in the field where technological innovation is active, such as robots, electric vehicles, bio technology, etc. Among them, 6 projects including ►microorganisms, such as Helicobacter pylori, and ►barcode recognition technology, etc. were agreed to move to the IPC conference of WIPO leading the IPC revision, and 11 proposals including ►surgical robots and ►charging devices for electric vehicles, etc. were agreed to be continuously discussed by being upgraded to formal revision projects of IP5 WG1.
This meeting was to share ►the status of revision to the other patent classification systems relating to the international patent classification, ►the trends of classification of patent documents using artificial intelligence (AI), and ►KIPO’s policy, etc. to support the carbon neutral technology.
In the IP5 WG1 meeting, which is a conference that IP5 hold alternately every year to revise and improve the IPC system in line with the emergence of new technologies and rapidly changing industrial structures, about 50 people of KIPO, which is the chair country, USPTO, JPO, CNIPA and EPO and WIPO patent classification experts, participated in the field and by video.
|
|
|
|
|
Prev |
|
Korean IP News No. 121 in Chines
|
|
|
Next |
|
Korean Industrial Insight No. 12 of AI, Semiconductors, Batteries and Electric vehicles
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
