1. When a decision of rejection made by a examiner is reversed at a patent trial, the total amount of the fees will be returned
- A system of returning the fees for requesting a trial has been enforced since April 28, 2016.
According to Korea Intellectual Property Tribunal, when a decision of rejection made by a trademark and design examiner is reversed at the trial stage, the total amount of the fees for requesting the trial has been returned to a person/party requesting the trial since April 28, 2016. This system will be applied to the patent and utility model fields from June 30, 2016.
Previously, when a request for a trial was withdrawn or a decision of rejection made by an examiner was reversed without any imputation of the person/party requesting the trial, since the fees already paid were not returned, there were a lot of complaints from people. Now, the relevant laws have been amended to enforce the revised Trademark Law and Design Law in April and the revised Patent Law and Utility Model Law in June.
Based on this revision, when a decision of rejection is reversed, a person/party requesting the trial receives the total amount of fees for requesting the trial, which has been already paid. When a request for a trial is withdrawn before a trial examination is concluded, 50% of the fees for requesting the trial are returned. To receive the fees for requesting the trial, the person/party requesting the trial may make an online request for the return of the fees at www.patent.go.kr-jsp/ka/menu/fee/main/FeeMain03.jsp (official fee management-official fee return) or submit the request by mail or in person.
2. A patent transaction is solved with an intellectual property (IP) utilization network (IP Plug)
The Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) opened an IP utilization network (IP Plug) event where a company as a patent technology demander interacts with a technology supplier mutually, to activate an IP transaction.
Last year, KIPO started the IP Plug as a transaction network which directly plugs companies as technology demanders and university and public research institutes as technology suppliers for the activation of IP transaction. Patent transaction specialists and private technology transaction companies have participated as intermediaries in IP Plug, to help the patent technology transaction. Further, for the commercialization of patent technology, investors, such as banks and venture capitalists, have gathered to try to solve technology transfer and commercialization at one stop.
KIPO has started networks in the fields of medical devices and electronic components last year and additionally operated the internet of things (IoT) and internet in robot and automation machine, marine bio, construction and transportation new technology fields this year.
3. A trend of patent applications related to the small cell technology
Before the fifth-generation (5G) mobile communication era, the number of patent applications related to the small cell technology which makes it possible to send massive data at a fast speed has increased.
A small cell is a small base station to support a narrower area compared with an existing base station. A number of small cells share a function of a large base station, to efficiently provide a diversity of services. Since a small cell is installed, at a relatively low cost, indoors (such as a home or office), areas where the amount of data use is great, or areas where signals are weak, it has merit in that it is possible to easily improve the quality of communication.
According to KIPO, as a result of investigating the current status of the small cell-related patent applications filed for the last 5 years, the number of the applications was 183 in 2011 but 557 in 2015, showing an increase of more than 3 times.
By technology fields, the most applications (29%) were related to the technology of managing wireless resource of a base station, followed by the applications (23%) related to access control based on terminal movement and the applications (10%) related to monitoring and electric power management. By applicants, the companies (89.1%) including Qualcomm, LG Electronics, Samsung Electronics, etc. filed the most application, followed by research institutes (9.4%) including Korea Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI), universities (1.4%) and individuals (0.1%).
4. The number of patent applications related to virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) has rapidly increased
According to KIPO, as a result of analyzing the AR-related Korean patent applications filed for the last 10 years (2005~2014), 52 applications were filed on average per year during 2005~2009 (261 applications for 5 years) and 619 applications were filed on average per year during 2010~2014 (3,094 applications for 5 years) with an increase of about 12 times.
∆ Current status of AR-related patent applications by fields
The patent applications for AR to realize a direct interaction by combining a real world were filed in the fields of education (13.4%), medical treatment (11.6%), culture (9.0%), sports (8.0%) and broadcast and advertisement (8.6%). More patent applications related to VR which is important in interaction and engagement with a virtual world using 3D modeling were filed in the fields of industry (18.0%), game (17.0%) and military (5.2%) compared with the applications related to AR.
∆ Trend of combination of AR and IoT
The technology to combine AR and real-time information using IoT was filed in 436 patent applications for 2010~2014. 148 patent applications (about 40%) were related to the combination of AR being applicable to a smart car and IoT, 107 patent applications (24.5%) were related to a smart home controlling home appliances, 39 patent applications (8.9%) were related to an artificial intelligence (AI) controlling AR and IoT, and 142 patent applications (32.6%) were related to other areas.
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