1. Additional penalties for infringement of intellectual property rights of small and medium businesses by big businesses

The Supreme Court Sentencing Committee reinforces sentencing standards for infringements of business secrets among intellectual property crimes such as additional penalties for industrial technology leakages or small and medium business technology infringement by big businesses. The amended sentencing standard will be effective from 1 July. The upper limit of a weighted region sentencing range for business secret infringements among intellectual property crimes was adjusted to increase to four years and six years for domestic and overseas infringements, respectively. Due to the amendment of this sentencing standard, it is possible to impose a maximum sentence of six years' imprisonment if an overseas company infringes the technology of a domestic company. In addition, by adding contents for the infringements of small and medium businesses by big businesses to the regulation defined as 'when causing serious damage to a right holder (victim),' which is a specific weighting factor of the intellectual property crimes, it is possible to impose additional penalties.

2. Patent applications in China twice as much as those in the US…   IT led ... Korea is one fifth of China

According to the report by the Institute for Information & Communication Technology Promotion (IITP) on Information Communication Technology (ICT) patent trends in major countries, the number of all patents filed to the Chinese Intellectual Property Office in 2015 was 1.1 million cases, which surpassed 589,000 cases of the US PTO, followed by Japan (319,000 cases) and Korea (213,000 cases).  The report has found that China became the country with the largest number of patent applications in the world in 2011 beating the United States, and the gap with the United States has further increased, which is second in the world," and "the gap in patent applications between China and the United States has increased from about 350,000 cases in 2014 to 500,000 cases just one year later. Among the top 10 patent applicants of Chinese companies, there are ZTE (3516 cases), Oppo (3338 cases), Huawei (3216 cases), Xiaomi (3183 cases), Internet security company Chifu 360 (2777 cases), display company BOE (2761 cases) and so on.  Samsung Electronics (2117 cases) and the US semiconductor company Qualcomm (1943 cases) ranked first and second when it comes to overseas companies that have entered China.

An appeal rate of patent invalidation trials filed by pharmaceutical companies on the basis that the decision by the examiners of KIPO to refuse an extension of a pharmaceutical patent is unfair reaches 69%, and a need to improve this system has been indicated by the KIPO. The extension registration system of the patent duration period is a system introduced in 1987 as a kind of compensation that some patent inventions could not have rights for a certain period of time due to being regulated by the authorities. By considering that, in a case of pharmaceuticals, the applicant does not inevitably have the rights for an average of five years compared to other industries even after acquiring patent rights, the KIPO has designed and operated the system, and grants the rights after reviewing the requirements for the application items. This is a side effect generated in Korea, after the US Hatch-Waxman Act, because this system was implemented without an improvement in the patent system or without sufficient prior research as a means to avoid trade friction in accordance with industry demands. In particular, after the 'granted patent linkage system' was introduced in Korea in 2015, lawsuits related to invalidation trials of pharmaceutical companies have increased. Accordingly, the KIPO will select subjects and form a TF during this month, and collect and analyze the precedents, examination standards and research reports of various other countries from May to October.

4. Prevention for overissue of patent suits..  Korea-China-Japan cooperation

In order to prevent the spread of 'standard patent' disputes in which astronomical litigation costs may result before the 4th industrial revolution, the three countries of Korea, China and Japan argued that they should establish a cooperative system.  In particular, in order to prevent harmful effects due to excessive standard patent disputes by global innovation companies such as Samsung, Apple, Qualcomm, Microsoft, Google, and the like, it is necessary for patent authorities and academics from each country to jointly establish an organic legal system and a countermeasure system.  Also, Korea raised a need to implement a "strong and flexible patent system" in order to promote a thriving patent ecosystem while responding to the offensive of patent specialty companies, so-called 'patent trolls.' At the '7th International Intellectual Property and Industrial Security Conference,' Korean, Chinese and Japanese patent experts voiced that Korea, China and Japan should cooperate to resolve rapidly increasing patent disputes.