1. A navigation for COVID 19-related patent information is opened
According to the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO), the ‘patent information navigation’ which provides, in real time, updated patent information related to COVID 19 has been opened since March 19, 2020.
The patent information navigation is a service to publish results of searching Korean and overseas patent trends by major fields, such as COVID 19-related medicines and vaccines, diagnosis and test, protection and disinfection/quarantine, and to provide, through the KIPO website (https://www.kipo.go.kr/ncov), patent information on the latest technology which is issued in the field which is arranged to be easily understood.
The reason for introducing this service is based on the decision that it is important to provide more accurate and objective technological information these days when fake information has been rampant especially on the internet and the social networking services (SNS) such that people’s anxiety has been increased.
The results of searching patent trends which is macroscopic technological information include trends of global patents, comparison of patent competitiveness by country, and results of analyzing patent competitiveness of global leading companies and Korean companies, which will be sequentially published by field.
2. It is possible to file a ‘provisional application’ in a free form upon filing an application
KIPO announced that from March 30, 2020 it would operate a system allowing a ‘provisional application’, which describes an invention without following an existing form of an application, to be submitted so that a Korean company can rapidly file a patent application.
KIPO revised the Enforcement Rules of the Korean Patent Law and Utility Model Law such that a provisional application in a free form, by not following the existing form, can be submitted when a patent application or a utility model application is filed.
But, since a provisional application cannot be subject to a patent examination, in order to obtain a patent with respect to the relevant invention, it is recommended to have the date of filing the provisional application acknowledged as a date of filing an application by again filing the application claiming priority within one (1) year from the date of filing the provisional application. Also, it is possible to again submit a formal application within one year and two months from the date of filing the provisional application.
3. KIPO controls counterfeit Korean products distributed through overseas online
- 21,242 posts covering from toys to machine parts were deleted, resulting an economic effect of 94,800,000,000 Korea Won
Last year, KIPO finally blocked, through the Korea Intellectual Property Protection Agency, 21,242 sales posts of counterfeit Korean products of 40 small and medium companies, which were distributed on Chinese online shopping malls, thereby resulting an economic effect of about 94,800,000,000 Korea Won.
By products, the most was stationery (19%), followed by children toys (16%), and design/character goods (10%). The machine parts including cutting tools, etc. and the hobby goods including ball jointed dolls, etc. were 5%, respectively.
The effective way to crack down on-line counterfeit products is that, when an owner of an original product reports its counterfeit product, an online businessman deletes the post relating to the product. However, in the cases of oversees online shopping malls, it is a reality that it is difficult for Korean small and medium companies lacking manpower to directly solve the problems of counterfeit products due to a language barrier.
4. A Korean style patent system to spread to the world
- KIPO completed a blueprint of a Saudi Arabian IP administrative information system
KIPO announced that on March 25, 2020 an information consulting to build an intellectual property (IP) administrative information system was successfully completed for the Saudi Authority for Intellectual Property (SAIP).
In June last year, KIPO supported that an information consulting contract for the IP administrative information system design is signed between the Korea Institute of Patent Information (KIPI) and SAIP.
In the process of conducing the consulting, a consortium was in charge of the IP system building design by analyzing the requirements of SAIP and deriving the detailed system specifications.
KIPO conducted a bridging role by providing advice and data to realize the patent administrative procedures and systems as a system.
Consulting was conducted in the way of optimizing the existing Korean style patent systems to align with the IP environments of Saudi Arabia. A basic design for the IP administrative information system development was provided as an output.
At present, the system export for Paraguay and Egypt and the information consulting for Brazil are in progress.
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