1. It has been ten years since the KIPO’s intellectual property special judicial police (IPSJP) was established…stopping infringement of intellectual property
- IPSJP has processed about 45,00 cases, arrested about 3,500 violators for criminal charges and cracked down about 12,000,000 counterfeit products.
- IPSJP established itself as a protector of intellectual property.
- In March 2019, the call of duty of IPSJP expanded from a trademark infringement investigation to patent, trade secret and design infringement investigation cases.
This year marks the 10th anniversary of IPSJP establishment. In September, 2010, IPSJP with three regional offices located in Daejeon, Seoul and Busan started as a first Korea professional investigation agency of counterfeit products. In March 2019, IPSJP expanded the call of duty from previously a trademark infringement investigation to patent, trade secret and design infringement investigation and at present 35 investigators fully deal with intellectual property infringement cases occurring all over the country.
During the process of handling about 45,000 cases over the last ten years, IPSJP arrested about 3,500 trademark infringement offenders for criminal charges and confiscated about 12,000,000 counterfeit products (corresponding to 500 billion Korea Won at the genuine price, thereby establishing itself as an intellectual property protector both in name and reality. The confiscated products are listed by price as follows: bags (155 billion Korea Won, 31%), car parts (65.7 billion Korea Won, 13%), clothing (58.7 billion Korea Won, 12%) and accessories (45.3 billion Korea Won, 9%).
IPSJP actively dealt with the large-scale counterfeit product distribution cases by cracking down the distributors of counterfeit health food (in May 2015, corresponding to 65.2 billion Korea Won at the genuine price), the distributors and sellers of counterfeit car wheels (in June 2017, corresponding to 22.5 billion Korea Won at the genuine price) and the manufacturers and distributors of counterfeit mask packs in large-scale (in July 2019, corresponding to 20 billion Korea Won at the genuine price).
In addition to the people’s health and safety-related items, IPSJP has expanded the area of regulation to K-POP content. Last year, IPSJP cracked down the counterfeit products relating to BTS (Bulletproof Boy Scouts) as a K-POP star, thereby announcing the importance of K-POP intellectual property protection.
Recently, as online consumption has rapidly increased by the growth of the uncontact (non-face-to-face) industry, the volume of counterfeit products has increased, focused online. In line with this flow, IPSJP has concentrated the investigation on the online transaction of counterfeit products. Not so long ago, IPSJP arrested a family transacting the counterfeit luxury products (corresponding to 62.5 billion Korea Won at the genuine price) using the SNS live broadcast.
Starting March 2019, IPSJP has actively investigated patent, trade secret and design infringement cases. To this end, IPSJP enables a rapid and accurate judgement of infringement by inputting the investigators having technical expertise. As a result, IPSJP achieved outstanding results of handling 276 technical cases over the last one and half years (March 2019~August 2020) and arrested 438 infringement offenders for criminal charges.
2. KIPO helps small and medium companies armed with ‘powerful patents’ in preoccupying the world market
- KIPO submitted a 2021 budget of 6,060 billion Korea Won to the National Assembly
The priority investments are as follows:
▴Support Korean promising small and medium companies in securing overseas patents (13.8 billion Korea Won)
▴Protection of overseas intellectual property rights (21.8 billion Korea Won)
▴Patent-based research and development to deal with COVID-19 (28.6 billion Korea Won)
▴Evaluation of financially linked patent value (96 billion Korea Won)
▴Support the patent security loan collection (93 billion Korea Won)
▴Creation of standard patent and verification of necessity (39 billion Korea Won)
▴National participation budget, such as supporting senior retired manpower in technology startups (42 billion Korea Won)
According to KIPO, a budget of 6,060 billion Korea Won prepared 2021 was submitted to the National Assembly.
The budget for next year is somewhat reduced relative to the budget for this year since the principal collection amount of the deposit of the public capital management fund among the revenue items is reduced. However, the major project cost for the creation and protection of intellectual property is prepared as 3,511 billion Korea Won with an increase of 235 billion Korea Won compared with the budget for this year.
The budget for the next year is to ① support promising small and medium companies in securing and protecting overseas patents, ② support patent-based R&D for the technical independence, ③ strengthen the recovery support according to non-performing patent security loan, ④ verify the necessity of standard patent and ⑤ strengthen the investment to the national participation budget.
As the number of technical literature, such as patents and theses, has rapidly increased and the number of trademark applications filed by wholesale business and retail business has increased around the online shopping malls, 746 billion Korea Won is planned for supporting high quality examination and trial services. The number of trademark applications increased from 181,606 (2016) to 182,918 (2017) to 200,341 (2018) to 221,507 (2019).
The plan is to create strong intellectual property rights by supporting promising local small and medium companies with high export growth potential to secure overseas patents and to preoccupy the global market. For this plan, 820 companies will be supported in the next year.
To minimize Korean companies’ intellectual property damages caused by the unauthorized preemption of K-brands and the distribution of counterfeit products thereof due to the Korean wave spread, the country to be dealt with the overseas online distribution of counterfeit products will expand from China to ASEAN and Taiwan plus a new office IP-DESK will be open in Russia.
In addition, a response to an international intellectual property dispute, such as a warning letter of a Korean export company to an overseas patent dispute, will be strengthened (including 370 companies).
When a trade secret leaks, digital forensics of PCs and notebooks of a victimized company will be supported to secure the initial evidence required for civil and criminal actions.
As the importance of securing digital evidence, such as emails, etc., in a company-related suit has increased, the support for a small/medium company in dealing with a trade secret will be strengthened.
Patent-based customized intellectual property strategies (IP-R&D) of small and medium companies will be continuously supported for the technical independence in the materials, parts and equipment areas
R&D tasks in the post-COVID-19 growth engine area, such as the contagious disease dealing technology and the non-face-to face technology, will be expansively supported.
3. Intellectual property-related problems of the Korean companies expanding in foreign countries were solved by non-face-to-face consulting.
- A video consulting period (September 16~23) was operated regarding the intellectual property rights of the Korean companies expanding in China and Southeast Asia.
According to KIPO and Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Corporation, they operated the video consulting period from September 16 to 23 regarding the intellectual property rights of the Korean companies which advanced into China and Southeast Asia.
The consulting period was arranged to provide a non-face-to-face consultation to the Korean companies which it was difficult to directly visit the overseas intellectual property centers (IP-DESK) due to the COVID-19 spread. A consultation regarding up to 2 countries was available at a request from any company or individual businessperson that wanted a consultation in relation to the intellectual property laws, systems and disputes in China (including Hong Kong) and 4 Southeast Asian countries (Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines and Indonesia).
During the consulting period, a participant company which accessed to the video consultation system in its office space could be free to ask of the staff in charge of the IP-DESK in each country and a local attorney for 15 minutes. After the video consultation ended, a company can continue a consultation with the corresponding IP-DESK by email or phone, etc. at any time.
4. KIPO, the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety (MFDS) and the Korea Consumer Agency (KCA) published a result of joint-inspecting masks
- 1,191 cases were caught including 745 false patent indication cases and 446 false and exaggerated advertisement cases.
As the use of masks has increased due to the COVID-19 affection, KIPO, MFDS and KCA conducted an intensive inspection on the online mask sale advertisement sites for 1 month.
As the result, a total of 1,191 cases were caught including 745 false patent indication cases and 446 exaggerated and false advertisement cases.
This joint-inspection was conducted to enable the consumers to correctly select products and to prevent their damages by checking the false patent indication and false and exaggerated advertisement of the products.
■ Results of KIPO’s inspection
KIPO inspected a total of 5,000 online patent, trademark and design indications and advertisement cases and caught 745 false patent indication cases for 11 products. The most cases (691 cases) mainly indicated incorrectly a ‘design registration’ as a ‘patent registration’.
Besides, 28 cases indicated as ‘registration’ even though the relevant products were as ‘pending applications’, 17 cases used ‘application numbers which were rejected for registration’ and 9 cases indicated the ‘patent numbers which had lapsed’.
Regarding the false patent indication posts as caught, KIPO will take actions to delete the posts or to stop selling and it will proceed with education on a method of correctly indicating intellectual property rights for sellers, in cooperation with the open market and social commerce, etc.
■ Results of MFDS and KCA’s inspection
MFDS and KCA inspected a total of 3,740 cases and caught 446 false and exaggerated advertisement cases. All of them were false advertisement cases where ‘industrial product masks’ which were not ‘quasi drugs’ were claimed to stand for ‘blocking yellow dust and fine dust’, ‘blocking splash and blocking harmful substance’, ‘quasi drugs (KF mask)’, ‘preventing COVID-19 infection’, ‘preventing virus and germ’, etc., thereby being likely to mislead them as quasi drugs or false advertising them as having medical efficacy.
MFDS and KCA requested the Korea Communications Standards Commission and the relevant shopping malls to block these false and exaggerated advertisement posts from their sites.
※ Quasi drugs (efficacy): health mask (which protects a respiratory system from particulate harmful substances and sources of infection, such as yellow dust, fine dust, etc.,), splash blocking mask (which prevents droplet infection in everyday life)
※ As to a ‘health mask’, there was no case of exaggeratedly advertising differently from the permitted articles.
Under the circumstance of COVID-19, it is desirable to wear a ‘quasi-drug’ mask permitted by MFDS. Since the ‘quasi-drug’ mask is a product of which the performance of blocking fine particles or droplets have been verified, a user should check the indication of ‘quasi-drug’ when purchasing a mask.
In addition, when wearing a mask, the user should wash the hands, perfectly cover the mouth and nose and check whether there is no gap between the face and the mask.
KIPO, MFDS and KCA announced to strengthen the cooperation to form the environment that consumers can safely use masks.
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