1. Application for industrial property rights in 2018, 480,000 ... The highest ever.

In 2018, industrial property applications such as patents, utility models, designs, and trademarks all scored 480,245, 4.9 percent up from 457,955 in 2017, the highest ever. According to the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO), last year the number of patents filed by industrial property rights was 209,992 patents, designs 63,680, and trademarks 200,341, and compared with the previous year, they increased by 2.5%, 0.4% and 9.5% respectively. The utility model was 6,232, down 8.5% from the previous year. When the patent application is classified according to the applicant type, SMEs accounted for the largest share (22.8%) with 47,947 cases, followed by 46,288 cases (22.0%) of foreign companies, 41,582 cases (19.8%) of individuals, large corporations 34,553 (16.4%), and university and public research institutes 27,555 (12.9%).

2. Improvement of the 「Trademark Examination Standards」 by the Patent Office,

Expand the range of rejection of imitation trademarks.

The KIPO established an amendment standard for trademark examination standards in order to prevent trademark applications that imitate popular characters and to prevent personal monopolies of utilitarian terms. This amendment is intended to strengthen the examination of trademark applications that imitate famous characters and character names, and to establish order of trademark use by strictly applying discrimination power to words with high public interest. According to the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO), the name of a famous character or character has been constantly imitated, and there is a case in which a person who does not have a legitimate right imitates a character or a character name and makes a trademark application. In this revision, if a prominent character or character name that has not yet been commercialized is likely to be commercialized, it will be rejected as an imitation trademark application. 

3. Court "Gamcheon swearword latte, which copied the swearword latte of Dongpirang Village, is plagiarism and should compensate to Dongpirang Village"

The 61st Division of the Civil District Court of Seoul judged that in a lawsuit filed by Kyungnam Tongyoung cafe owner against the owner of A cafe in Gamcheon Cultural Village in Busan, the defendant should pay 2.3 million won to the plaintiff. Court also judged that the mark of a swearword latte should not be displayed on coffee or advertising. As a latecomer, A Cafe, used the name "Gamcheon swearword latte" and gained popularity as a cafe latte, which swear on bubbles like Ulabong Cafe. Ulabong Cafe filed a lawsuit against A cafe against trademark infringement. The court judged that the A-Cafe infringed the trademark rights of Ulabong Cafe from December 2015 to February of the following year.

4. Patent Court recognized Bigeumdo spinach 'Sumcho' trademark ... "It's different from regular spinach"

The first part of the Patent Court judged that the Bigeum Agricultural Cooperative won the plaintiffs' Trademark registration invalidation lawsuit filed against Kim. The court overturned the decision of the Patent Tribunal and lifted the Bigeum Agricultural Cooperative's hand. The court judged that "Bigeumdo spinach is attached to the ground and grows sideways. It is distinguished from ordinary spinach, and it has high sugar content and thick leaves and stems, so it is sold at a higher price than regular spinach because it has good texture." Then considering that Sumcho was introduced to a newspaper article steadily as spinach grown in Bigeumdo and it was awarded a national brand award in the agri-food sector in 2018 and is widely known to consumers, the court held that it is "a trademark with distinctive discrimination."