HOME > Resources > Newsletters
　

Title
The Ministry of Intellectual Property (MOIP) newly established a bureau dedicated to respond to disputes for a national level rapid response to intellectual property (IP) disputes.(News Letter No. 565)

Author　
KH

Post Date　
2025-12-02

Read
41

Attach File
-
1. The Ministry of Intellectual Property (MOIP) newly established a bureau dedicated to respond to disputes for a national level rapid response to intellectual property (IP) disputes.



- MOIP increased the budget for 2026 by 14.5 billion Korea Won, an increase of 45.1% compared to the previous year, making every effort to protect domestic and foreign IP rights.

MOIP has established a bureau dedicated to respond to IP disputes, “IP Dispute Resolution Bureau”, to strengthen the prevention and response to IP disputes and it has set the budget for 2026 to 46.8 billion Korea Won increased by 14.5 billion Korea Won compared to the previous year.

The IP Dispute Resolution Bureau (1 bureau, 5 divisions, 42 staff) was newly established with the launch of MOIP to establish and implement nationwide IP protection policies, such as advanced prevention of IP disputes, rapid response at the national level in the event of a dispute, and to take charge of and coordinate IP protection work which is dispersed by the ministry.

To this end, the IP Dispute Resolution Bureau plans to carry forward focusing on the following projects of: ▲ eradicating the Korean wave piggybacking, ▲ blocking the production of counterfeit products using cutting-edge technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), etc., and supporting damage relief for counterfeit product buyers, ▲ supporting effective response in the case of litigation with an overseas non-practicing entity (NPE) which makes profit by exercising patent rights (licensing, lawsuit for damages) against manufacturing companies, without producing or selling products by using patented technology, and ▲ establishing and disseminating a trade secret management system using AI to protect technology.



To block the Korean wave piggybacking act which takes advantage of the popularity of a K-brand and makes people misidentify it as if it were a Korean company or product, 9.4 billion Korea Won has been set aside to strengthen local fact-finding investigations and crackdowns, to establish a cooperation system with overseas local diplomatic missions, and to establish customized response strategies for damages, such as sending warning letter, filing civil lawsuits and filing joint applications, etc.

In addition, 1.6 billion Korea Won was set to support the introduction of anti-counterfeiting technology that makes it difficult to produce a counterfeit product of a K-brand and makes possible for a consumer to easily check the authenticity, and 2.9 billion Korea Won was set to establish an AI counterfeit product appraisal support system to quickly assess, by using AI, whether a product is counterfeit and relieve a consumer’s damage.



Further, 1.2 billion Korea Won was set for a project to expand trade secret and technology protection consulting to reduce damages of small and medium companies, which is estimated to be about 540 billion Korea Won per year, by technology theft and to establish and disseminate an automated trade secret classification and leak prevention system using AI, so that small and medium companies can systematically classify and manage trade secrets.

Furthermore, to effectively respond to IP disputes with NPEs which Korean companies have experienced overseas, 1 billion Korea Won was set for a project to analyze dispute trends and derive response strategies focusing on the industries where disputes with NPEs have been frequent and to early detect NPEs and share them with Korean companies.



To comprehensively support the domestic and overseas IP dispute prevention and response, the public interest patent attorney center, the committee for medication of dispute over industrial property rights and the trade secret protection center, etc. were integrated to expand and reorganized as an IP legal aid center. An overseas IP center (IP-DESK) will be additionally opened to strategically respond to overseas IP disputes, and an IP dispute comprehensive support infrastructure will be strengthened to support educational cooperation functions for local companies and government agencies.


2. 2025 Korea Intellectual Property Network (KIPnet) academic conference was held.

- The conference was held to discuss the direction of data and IP to open the era of AI.

The Presidential Council on Intellectual Property (Co-chairman by Prime Minister KIM Min Seok, non-official council chairman LEE Kwang Hyung, hereinafter referred to as the ‘Council on IP’) held the ‘2025 Korea Intellectual Property Network (KIPnet) academic conference on the subject of ‘data-based IP creation and utilization in the era of AI’.

KIPnet is a public-private intellectual property policy council launched in April 2012, in which IP-related governments, public institutions, industry-specific cooperative organizations, universities, government-funded research institutes, and research support institutions participate to propose policies across IP and promote exchanges and cooperation among related organizations.

The KIPnet academic conference marking its 16th anniversary this year was prepared to share the results of the research projects of each division of the professional committee of the Council on IP and the communication and cooperation division of KIPnet.

The academic conference began with an opening speech by LEE Kwang Hyung, non-official council chairman of the Council on IP, followed by congratulatory speeches by YOON Byung Soo, president of the Korea Intellectual Property Strategy Agency, and KIM Myung Seop, president of Korea Institute of Intellectual Property Promotion, followed by keynote speeches.

Through a keynote speech, KIM Ji Su, chairman of Academic of Korean Patent Law Society explained the relationship between technology-led innovation growth and intellectual property, and proposed intellectual property policy directions in the field of patents and AI for innovative growth.

In the subsequent topic presentation by division, the first session on the subject of the ‘data-based intellectual property creation and utilization in the era of AI’ provided the presentations of: ‘policy research for balance between public data opening and private IP creation (creation division)’, ‘policy improvement plan for fair use of AI learning data (protection division)’, ‘copyright protection plan in the AI learning stage (basic division)’, and ‘strategies of establishing and disseminating K-culture public content for AI learning (new knowledge division)’.

The second session on the subject of the ‘activation of intellectual property utilization to realize an powerful intellectual property country’ provided the presentations of: ‘plan to utilize unutilized patents in the field of carbon-neutral green energy (utilization division)’, ‘intellectual property financial product and strategy development to attract investment (KIPnet division 1)’, and ‘plan to expand intellectual property finance market by structuring intellectual property finance (KIPnet division 2).

LEE Kwang Hyung, non-official council chairman of the Council on IP, said, “to secure the sustainability of the AI ecosystem, it is necessary to balance the fair use and protection of high quality data, and the intellectual property system should be supported to establish a national innovation ecosystem in which AI, data and intellectual property are in virtuous circulation….We will not spare any effort and support from the Council of IP for the Republic of Korea to become a powerhouse of data and intellectual property.”


3. 17.57 million Japanese patent publications are now available in Korean.

- MOIP opens the Korean translation data of foreign patent publications for the fourth time, so the number of cumulative translation cases exceeds 76 million.
- Korean people can now check even Japanese patents following European, US and Chinese patents by AI Korean translation.

According to MOIP, Korean translation data of 17.57 million Japanese patent publications have been opened, free of charge, through KIPRISplus, which is a patent information open platform, since November 27, 2025.



The data to be opened at this time are Korean translation of a total of 17.57 million Japanese patent publications published by the Japanese Patent Office from 1973 to September 2024.

Through these Korean translation data, anyone can search and view the Japanese patent publications, thereby using Japanese patent information without language barriers.

By using the Korean translations, companies and research institutes can conduct prior art search, valuation and research and development (R&D) analysis of the Japanese patents. The relevant companies which provide application services by using the intellectual data enable new service developments, such as patent analysis, etc., based on the Korean translations of Japanese patents.



The Japanese to Korean translator used for these translation data is characterized in that since AI learns the publications of patents jointly filed in Korea and Japan, it is able to more accurately process the unique sentence structures of patent documents and the technical terms by technical field.



This release of the Korean translation of Japanese patent publications is the 4th time following 5 million European publications in 2022, 14.80 million US publications in 2023, 39 million Chinese publications in 2024. The number of cumulative Korean translations of IP5 publications, which have been released so far, reached about 76.37 million cases. When about 5.66 million Korean publications currently serviced by MOIP (as of the end of October, 2025) are added, Korean people can now search about 82.03 million patent publications of IP5 by using the Korean language.


4. The revision of the Korean Design Protection Act has been enforced (November 28, 2025) such as the improvement of a design registration system by partial examination, the introduction of a design right transfer requesting system, etc.

According to MOIP, the partial revised laws of the Korean Design Act and the enforcement decrees and enforcement rules thereof were implemented on November 28, 2025, which mainly focused on improving the design registration system by partial examination and strengthening the right protection of a legitimate right owner, etc.



In principle, the Design Protection Act adopts the ‘examination principle’ to examine all registration requirements but operates the ‘design registration system by partial examination’ which simplifies the examination to quickly secure rights as to articles with a short fashion cycle, such as clothing, accessories, etc.

However, as online transactions have been activated, the number of cases of abusing the design registration system by partial examination has increased, such as an increase in number of cases of registering already known designs and exclusively selling them, thereby raising the need to improve the design registration system by partial examination. Accordingly, this revision provides a legal basis for rejecting the registration of an application for design registration by partial examination when an examiner finds a clear reason for rejection of a design with a lack of novelty, etc.

In addition, anyone can cancel the registration of a wrong design registration by partial examination through an opposition. However, since the period for filing an opposition was short as 3 months from the date of registration publication, there were many time limitations on using the system. In this revision, if an infringement notice has been received, an opposition can be filed within 3 months from the date of receiving the infringement notice (but, within 1 year from the date of registration publication). Through this, a unfair design right can be canceled as soon as possible, to be contributed to the stability of the transaction order.



The protection of a true right owner is also strengthened. At present, when a design stolen by an unentitled one is registered, a rightful owner shall again file a design application after invalidating the relevant design right. To solve the complicated procedures and time-consuming problems, this revision introduces the ‘design right transfer requesting system’, in which a rightful owner files with a court a request for transferring the design right to directly take over the stolen right. In the future, the rightful owner will be able to choose between two ways: after invalidating the right of the unentitled one, either obtaining registration again or directly requesting a court to ‘transfer the design right’. The rightful owner can choose the right remedy for his/her situation and it will be possible to more quickly and efficiently secure the right.

Besides, the ‘main point of creation content’ is deleted from the description of a design application, thereby improving the convenience of preparing the application.


5. Korea Intellectual Property Trial and Appeal Board (IPTAB) publishes a user guidebook of I trial and appeal procedures across the IP5 offices.

-IPTAB provides a key guide to help people compare and understand the IP5’s trial and appeal systems.

According to IPTAB of MOIP (Minister KIM Yong Sun), an English version and a Korean version of the user guidebook of trial and appeal procedures across the IP5 offices’, which comprehensively summarizes the trial and appeal systems and procedures of IP5 (five advanced IP offices: MOIP, USPTO, EPO, JPO and CNIPA), are available at the IPTAB website.

The guidebook includes the data systematically summarized based on the information provided by IP5, such as ▲ organization and contact information of each country’s tribunal, ▲ trial request procedures, ▲ correction (amendment) requirements, ▲ user-friendly systems, and ▲ main reference materials, etc. The guidebook is organized to compare and understand the differences in trial systems among the countries. It will be continuously updated by reflecting the latest system changes and practical cases in the meeting of presidents of IPTAB of IP5, which is every year held.
　

Prev　
No Data ...

Next　
Korean Industrial Insight No. 19 of AI, Semiconductors, Batteries, Electric vehicles, and Bio