1. KIPO expands the recruitment of examination manpower specialized in the cutting-edge technology field.
KIPO recruits 26 professional examination manpower. Following the hiring of 21 examiners (general public official level 6) in the first half of this year, KIPO proceeds with a second career competitive recruitment.
This recruitment fills up the manpower having professionalism and leadership in the bio health care, artificial intelligence and display technology fields, where the number of patent applications has recently increased, and the next-generation battery and environment technology fields, where the importance of the eco-friendly technology is emphasized.
Specifically, KIPO is to provide a high-quality examination service by rapidly recruiting the examination manpower in the medical robot • artificial intelligence • machine learning, organic light emitting diodes (OLED) and battery technology fields.
An examiner of KIPO performs a role in the granting of an intangible right by examining whether a patent, design or trademark, etc. created by a researcher or a company can be legally protected.
The size of the KIPO’s carrier competitive employment of examiners is a total of 26 (including 3 in administrative positions and 23 in technical position). If an applicant has a degree (higher than a masters degree) or a professional certificate (for a lawyer, a patent attorney, etc.), s(he) is eligible for applying.
2. The Korea Intellectual Property Trial and Appeal Board (KIPTA) of KIPO and the Boards of Appeal of European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) discussed the standards to handle a dispute related to a trademark use in an online platform.
On September 16, 2021, the KIPTA and the EU Trademark Trial and Appeal Board held a cooperative conference, to discuss major issues and policy directions to deal with a rapidly changing market structure, such as online platform activation, etc.
The Korea-EU trademark trial cooperative conference, which has been annually held since 2019, has been used to share the two organizations’ major systems and trial cases and statistics, etc. and to discuss a cooperative plan for current issues.
In this conference held in a contactless video meeting, the presidents of the two organizations directly attended to discuss regarding: △ how to deal with online evidence in a trademark trial, △ how to survey and utilize trademark awareness and △ how to process a dispute of a trademark in the application filed for an unfair intention, etc. The conference was held in the form of presentation and discussion focusing on the relevant systems and major cases.
In the first session, a discussion was related to the range and requirements of recognizing an online trademark use which has gradually increased by an electronic commerce and an online marketing activation, etc. It was also reconfirmed that mutually continuing discussion and cooperation would be needed in response to a future market change.
Specially, in this session, time was provided to listen to the answers to Korean companies’ questions which had been taken to be delivered to the EU trademark appeal board, by reflecting their increased interest in a global e-commerce market due to the worldwide contactless consumption trend and the rapid advance of a K-brand since the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the discussion related to the survey of the trademark awareness, how to use the two organizations’ survey of the awareness was discussed. The two organizations’ systems and recent trail cases as to handle a dispute relating to a ‘trademark with a unfair intent’ were shared.
3. KIPO holds a seminar on a standard of writing genetic information (sequence list).
As a new standard (ST.26) of a gene sequence list and an amino acid sequence list which must be essentially written when filing a patent application in the biotechnology field has been established, KIPO and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) jointly hold an online seminar to introduce the new standard thereof.
The new standard is to more rapidly and effectively disclose sequence information by reflecting a data standard which has been used in the world three (3) bio sequence information data centers, etc. The world three (3) bio sequence information data centers including NCBI (US), EMBL-EBI (Europe) and DDBJ (Japan) formed the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration (INSDC) to share the data. INSDC stores not only patent sequences also sequences listed in the papers and opens sequences, in a form to be freely searchable, to the public so that people skilled in the life science and medical fields essentially utilize when the prior art search.
When using the new standard, since the sequence information which is a core of bio big data is provided more promptly to researchers, KIPO expects it will greatly contribute to new technology development and patent acquisition in the biotechnology and medical fields.
This seminar is to be held online over two times by inviting an expert in the biotechnology field as a lecturer so that users have no problems in writing sequence lists by using the new standard.
Byung Wook LEE, a senior researcher of the Korean Bioinformation Center (KOBIC) affiliated with the Korea Research Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology (KRIBB) (President: Jang Seong KI) integrated managing the Korean bio research resources, will be invited as a lecturer to directly conduct the seminar.
This joint seminar has no limitation in the number of enrollees since it is to be conducted online. However, anyone that wants to enroll needs to register in advance through the WIPO’s online seminar registration requesting link*, to get the online seminar link address.
(1st) https://www.wipo.int/meetings/en/details.jsp?meeting_id=65769
(2nd) https://www.wipo.int/meetings/en/details.jsp?meeting_id=65792
4. An elevator’s evolution is to have a safety technology against corona virus (COVID-19).
- The number of patent applications relating to an elevator combined with a technology of blocking the spread of the virus has rapidly increased.
According to KIPO, the number of patent applications related to the technology which blocks the spread of virus in an elevator which is a representative place being closed and crowded in our real life has rapidly increased in 2020 by more than 6 times compared to 2019.
The number of these patent applications relating to the technology of blocking the spread of virus in an elevator was an annal average of 15 over the last 10 years (2010~2019) but sharply increased to 114 in 2020 only due to the worldwide spread of COVID-19.
The technology of blocking the spread of virus applied to an elevator includes: the contactless information input technology enabling to call an elevator and to select a destination floor without directly pressing a button, the technology of purifying, sterilizing and disinfecting the inside air, and the technology of sterilizing and disinfecting a touch button.
The contactless information input technology mainly uses a method of receiving information which is input by recognizing the hand of a user using an infrared sensor, a camera, etc. and a method of receiving information which is input by a sound and a smart phone, etc.
The technology of purifying the inside air and sterilizing and disinfecting a button mainly uses a method of spraying disinfectant or sterilizing and disinfecting using UV when no one is present in the elevator.
By detailed technology, the contactless information input technology was filed in 40 applications (35%), the inside air purifying, sterilizing and disinfecting technology in 38 (33%) and the button sterilizing and disinfecting technology in 36 (32%), showing that the applications were relatively evenly filed by technology.
Previously, the number of the applications for the inside air purifying, sterilizing and disinfecting technology and the button sterilizing and disinfecting technology was less than 10 every year. However, in 2020, 38 applications were filed for the inside air purifying, sterilizing and disinfecting technology and 36 were filed for the button sterilizing and disinfecting technology, showing a greater increase respectively.
By applicants, the percentage of the applications filed by companies and research institutes was high at 71% by 2019, however, the percentage of the applications filed by individuals, 61%, was much higher than that filed by companies and research institutes, 39%, in 2020.
The increase in individual filings is considered due to the personal danger of being exposed to the spread of virus, which people directly feel in a closed and crowed elevator (for the duration from tens of seconds at least to 2~3 minutes at most) and think of an idea to remedy the problem and file a patent application on that idea.
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