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A suspension of examination of a divisional application is allowed.(News Letter No. 558) |
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KH |
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2025-08-18 |
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105 |
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1. A suspension of examination of a divisional application is allowed.
KIPO announced to implement a partial revision of the enforcement regulations of the Korean patent and utility model act including the permission of a suspension of examination of a divisional application from July 11, 2025. The suspension of examination is a system that delays the timing of examination through an applicant’s request.
In the high-tech fields, such as telecommunications, pharmaceuticals, and bio technology, etc., the number of applicants which want their applications to be examined strategically slowly has increased as it has taken a considerable amount of time to commercialize the relevant products, etc. However, since a request for a suspension of examination of a divisional application was restricted, the applicant’s request for a late examination was not met. Through this revision permitting a suspension of patent application examination of a divisional application, it is expected that the applicant of a divisional application is able to establish strategies to secure a patent according to the time of commercialization of a product.
The director of the patent examination policy bureau of KIPO said, “this revision increases the convenience of the patent procedures by reflecting the voices of applicants…we will continue to promote innovation in patent administration services to meet the needs of applicants.”
2. KIPO held an IP meeting with AI companies.
KIPO, Korea Management Innovation Association for Small and Medium Business (Inno-Biz Association) and AI innovative companies held a meeting to discuss ways to strengthen patent competitiveness and advance into the global market.
This meeting was arranged as part of active administration to strengthen vertical and horizontal cooperation among the innovative companies in the domestic ‘AI value chain’ and to enhance patent competitiveness of AI innovative companies by solving IP difficulties.
According to MarketsandMarkets, which is a market research company, as the global AI market size is expected to have an explosive growth of 35.7%, annual average, from $214.6 billion in 2024 to approximately $1.4 trillion in 2030, the AI technology has been a game changer of innovation such that global competition has been intensified to secure the leadership of each country.
Based on the WIPO’s patent landscape report: generative AI which was published last year, the number of generative AI patents increased by 19 times over 10 years, from 733 in 2014 to 14,000 in 2023. In ranking the number of generative AI patent applications, South Korea was 3rd following China and the US. China had 38,210 patent applications, the US 6,276, South Korea 4,155, Japan 3,409 and India 1,350.
However, as a result of KIPO’s analysis of the patent trends of AI’s 12 application services by technology, which was published from 2003~2023, since South Korea had a low proportion of overseas patent applications, it needs to make active efforts to preoccupy the global market.
The AI innovative companies participated in the meeting suggested: ▲ to expand support in the intellectual property R&D and overseas patent applications in the AI field, ▲ to raise funds for global expansion, ▲ to shorten the patent examination period in the AI sector which is a rapidly changing technology, ▲ to open AI patent learning data and ▲ to improve patent examination standards in the AI field by reflecting an industrial eye level, etc.
The president of the Inno-Biz Association said, “AI is a survival strategy for small and medium companies, and Inno-Biz companies with innovative technologies at the center can play a big role.” He also requested to strengthen IP support to strengthen the global competitiveness of AI innovative companies.
The commissioner of KIPO said, “to enter the world’s top three largest AI powerhouses, we need the ecosystem open-source strategy and the strong IP securing strategy by step of the AI value chain…We will support AI innovative companies to create and protect their original technologies to be made into luxury patents which are valuable and need to be strongly protected and to expand their global advance.
3. KIPO confiscated about 40,000 counterfeit products and accessories, etc. corresponding to genuine market price: about 340 billion Korea Won.
On July 1, 2025, it was announced that the trademark special judicial police of KIPO (hereinafter, referred to as a ‘trademark police’) sent to the prosecution on charges of violating the Korean trademark act, “A” (age: 38) who ran a large accessory store in the Busan area and distributed a large quantity of counterfeit luxury accessories (also known as ‘fake’), such as rings and necklaces.
According to the trademark police, from January to April 2025, “A” mainly sold counterfeit luxury accessories and miscellaneous goods of famous characters, etc. at wholesale prices and has been suspected of distributing about 40,000 items (corresponding to genuine market price: about 340 billion Korea Won) in South Korea, the largest since the trademark police was launched.
In January 2025, the trademark police detected the circumstances of wholesalers promoting counterfeit luxury accessories in the community-type social networking service (SNS), etc. and started an investigation. After securing evidence of counterfeit luxury accessories after about 2 months of intensive investigation, the trademark police confiscated the counterfeit products at a large store operated by suspect “A”.
As a result of investigation, suspect “A” mainly sold the counterfeit luxury accessories and miscellaneous goods of famous characters, which were made of surgical steel material, at wholesale prices and directly sold some of them to consumers in the store.
The brands of the counterfeit products as confiscated are Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels, Chanel, among the others, showing that the counterfeit accessories of foreign luxury goods are found to be the most at 30,543 (77.6%). The trademark police confiscated 7,924 counterfeit products (20.1%) using the famous character trademarks, such as Sanrio Company (Hello Kitty, etc.), Pocket Monster, Kakao Friends, etc., without permission and 913 counterfeit products (2.3%) of fashion brands, such as MLB, EMIS, etc.
By confiscated item, the accessories, such as rings and bracelets, etc., accounted for the largest number of items at about 30,000. About 10,000 miscellaneous items, such as key rings, hats, etc., were confiscated.
In this crackdown, about 40,000 counterfeit accessories corresponding to genuine market price of about 340 billion Korea Won were confiscated. This is the largest amount based on the original price of confiscated products in a single case since the trademark police was launched in September 2010. This exceeded, by more than 5 times, the previous record of 65.2 billion Korea Won in 2015, the largest value of the confiscated products in a single case.
The director of the intellectual property protection & international cooperation bureau of KIPO said, “this crackdown is a significant case of confiscating the largest counterfeit products ever as a result of accurately capturing the large-scale distribution of the counterfeit accessories through planning investigations and responding in a timely manner…The trademark police will continue to strengthen its planning and investigation capabilities to eradicate the act of distributing counterfeit products which threaten the genuine product market.”
4. Korea Intellectual Property Trial and Appeal Board (IPTAB) resolves semiconductor patent disputes through the ‘trial-mediation linkage’ system.
According to IPTAB of KIPO, a case of patent invalidation trial among domestic companies in the semiconductor equipment field was linked by mediation and the case was promptly closed under agreement between the parties to the dispute.
Mediation is one of the alternative dispute resolution (ADR) means to solve a dispute with the help of a third-party mediator. When the mediation is established, it has the same effect as reconciliation in court.
It is general for IP-related disputes to be resolved through trial and litigation procedures. However, in this case, there is a disadvantage that it takes a long time to resolve the dispute and consumes a lot of money. Further, as one side wins or loses the judgement and lawsuit, it is often difficult to cooperate between the two parties after the dispute is concluded.
In this regard, this year IPTAB prepared the related systems and procedures to activate, in the patent field, the trial-mediation linkage system which has been operated mainly in the trademark and design fields. At this time, the first case has been derived from the patent dispute between domestic semiconductor equipment companies.
Trial-mediation linkage system: Regarding a trial case that a chief judge decides that a solution through mediation is needed rather than a trial procedure, the trial-mediation linkage is a system to refer to a mediation procedure of the committee for mediation of disputes over industrial property rights with the consent of both parties. In this case, especially a chief judge and a judge participate in the mediation committee and play an important role. A mediation period is up to 6 months and no additional costs are charged.
Before determining whether or not invalidity of a semiconductor equipment-related patent, IPTAB identified the case of the dispute and recommended the transition to mediation procedures before the conflict intensified. The two companies agreed to this and the case was referred to the mediation procedures (March 10, 2025). A mediation committee in which judges directly participated was promptly formed. The two companies agreed to share the relevant patent right through two mediation meetings (April ~ May 2025) and several consultations, so that after 3 months, the settlement was reached and the trial was concluded (June 10, 2025). The two companies also agreed to resume cooperation contracts, such as delivery, and to pursue joint technology development in the future.
This mediation establishment is significant in that not only it ended the patent dispute but also it led to the restoration of cooperative relations between the two companies. Especially, in the semiconductor field where competition for technology development among countries is fierce, it is noteworthy that this case is an example of dispute resolution that can contribute to secureing the advantage of domestic semiconductor technology by joining forces between domestic companies and strengthening industrial competitiveness.
The representative of the company participated in the mediation reportedly said, “without the recommendation of the judging department for mediation, the dispute would have lasted for a long time and put a heavy burden on business activities….We are very grateful to the mediation committee that, through the mediation procedures, the dispute has been resolved quickly and the two companies have been restored to cooperative relations.”
5. KIPO and the Korea Ministry for Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MIFAFF) starts strengthening K-food brand protection policy.
- A committee to respond to the counterfeit goods of K-food activates public-private collaboration to block counterfeit and imitation products.
KIPO and MIFAFF held a consultative meeting on how to respond to counterfeit goods of K-food in the first half of 2025.
According to KIPO, the ‘13th edition of the Nice International Classification of goods and services’ including the above has been confirmed in June 2025 by reflecting the results of the 35th session of the committee of Nice experts (April ~ May 2025), and it will newly apply from January 1, 2026.
Since low-cost and low-quality counterfeit products have been frequently distributed and sold abroad by riding on the global popularity of K-food, the two organizations discussed response measures, together with major export companies and food industry associations, as part of proactive administration to protect Korean export companies’ rights and to prevent an infringement to K-food brand value.
The major content of the meeting included: △ the results of monitoring counterfeit products and unauthorized preoccupation of trademarks in the first half of the year, and the results of training and consultation for export companies, △ key projects for responding to counterfeit products in the second half of the year, △ plan to listen to and support difficulties in the export industry, etc.
The director of the intellectual property protection & international cooperation bureau of KIPO said, “since the number of counterfeit goods of K-brands has rapidly increased, we are concerned about the Korean companies’ difficulties in export and the decline in brand trust…KIPO will strengthen the prevention and relief of damages to Korean companies due to the counterfeit goods of K-brands, through active cooperation with the relevant ministries.”
The director of the food industry policy of MIFAFF expressed, “as long as the K-food export has maintained a solid upward trend of more than 7% this year, compared to the last year, despite the difficult conditions at home and abroad, we will spare no support for counseling on difficulties, education and advice, applications and registration of intellectual property rights, etc. while closely monitoring overseas counterfeit goods so that Korean agri-food companies do not have any difficulties in entering overseas markets.”
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