1. U.S. patents will be easily obtained Requirements for Korea-America Collaborative Search Program (CSP) are alleviated

KIPO and USPTO have been implementing the second pilot project of CSP since Nov. 1. According to the KIPO on Nov. 9th, the CSP is a program whereby when the same invention is filed for a patent in Korea and America, the examiners of both countries share prior art information necessary for deciding whether it is patentable or not and examine it faster than other patent applications. As the priority examination application fee of about 5 million won is exempted by the USPTO, time and costs for Korean firms to obtain U.S. patents are greatly saved.

The first pilot project has been implemented for two years from 2015 to the end of August this year, and during this period 112 applications (77 domestic and 35 foreign) were requested. The examination processing period needed an average of 7.5 months, such that the process was reduced by 3.5 months compared to ordinary examination cases, and the patent registration rate was 84.4%, which is 25.2% higher than the ordinary examination cases. The results between the two countries (patent registration or rejection) were closely aligned with each other at 85.3%.

2. Korea and China patent office chiefs to strengthen cooperation for Collaborative Search Program (CSP) project

Korea and China will implement the 'Collaborative Search Program (CSP) project' and strengthen bilateral cooperation especially in the fields of patent and design so as to result in an international success story. The KIPO announced on Nov. 19th that its commissioner Sung Yun-Mo had a meeting with SIPO Commissioner Shen Changyu on Nov. 17th in Hangzhou, China to reach an agreement as described above. The meeting is characterized in that a memorandum of understanding (MOU) relating to the 'Collaborative Search Program (CSP) project' was signed so that Korean and Chinese examiners will jointly examine the same inventions filed in the two countries. The KIPO said, its significance is that China goes hand in hand with Korea for the first time to participate in the CSP project, and in particular, the MOU is the first to be signed between central government agencies of the two countries this year.

As of November, only two CSPs between Korea and America, and Korea and Japan are in operation worldwide.

3. Korea was selected as a chairman country in a meeting of patent offices of five countries advanced in trademark and design to be held next year

The KIPO announced on Dec. 6th that Korea was selected as a chairman country for the annual meeting of TM5 (Trade Mark 5) & ID5 (Industrial Design 5) to be held in Alicante, Spain. The TM5 started as a three-country meeting (TM3) of America, Europe and Japan in 2001, and it developed into a five-country meeting (TM5) with participation of Korea in 2011 and China in 2012. After that, an independent ID5 system was created.

In the 2018 TM5 meeting will be discussed a TM-View utilization scheme whereby a DB of about 44,800,000 trademarks of 60 patent offices worldwide can be searched integrally, a scheme for building a list of jointly acknowledged goods, and a comparative analysis project of examination results. In the ID5 meeting will be discussed various topics including a comparison between requirements for design registration and requirements for drawings of each country, a comparison of priority systems, and protection of new technology design for finding effective protection of graphical user interface (GUI) & user experience (UX) designs.

4. Korea achieved the worldwide top position in the number of patent applications compared to GDP and population

In 2016, Korea took the top position in WIPO member countries in the number of patent applications compared to GDP and population. According to the report, the number of worldwide patent applications was 3,128,000 last year, passing 3 million for the first time, showing an increase of 8.3% compared to 2015 (2,889,000). By country, China took the first position (1,340,000), followed by America (606,000), Japan (318,000) and Korea (209,0000). But in the number of patent applications per patent examiner, Korea took the first position, showing a great difference from major countries including Japan, and thereby it is urgently needed to increase the number of examiners to enhance the quality of patent examination.