1. Patent KAMCO to be launched next year (2020)

The Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) is promoting the establishment of an ‘IP Recovery Specialized Agency’ by January to February of next year to improve the practical use of IP financing means. If an enterprise takes out a loan from the bank against an IP held by the enterprise, then the enterprise fails to pay the debt, the ‘IP Recovery Specialized Agency’ plays a role in purchasing the mortgaged IP off the bank to promote the monetization of the purchased IP. The ‘IP Recovery Specialized Agency’ is called ‘Patent KAMCO’ because it handles similar tasks to the Korea Asset Management Corporation (KAMCO), which is wholly responsible for collecting overdue loans and clearing up non-business properties of general financial institutions.

The Korean government pursued IP mortgage loans as a small and medium businesses financial policy this year. Banks rushed to launch IP mortgage products, but the response was insignificant. By June this year, there were only 54 cases of IP mortgage loans in commercial banks at a value of 68.7 billion won. From 2015 to present, the cumulative loans have amounted to only 268 cases (338.0 billion won). Banks and KIPO cited the deactivation of the IP trading market as a cause of the nominal IP mortgage loans.

2. Launched ‘Ceramic Keeper’ to prevent copying of ceramic design

Gyeonggi-do and the Korea Ceramic Foundation are investigating conditions of protection and piracy of ceramic designs to ensure fairer economic activity and the prevention of design piracy in the ceramic industry, a local specialized field. The Ceramic Keeper consists of a total of 63 students including 59 students in charge offline and 4 students in charge online, which are selected among students and graduate students of Ceramics, Design, and Art Studies, and potters registered in the Korea Ceramic Foundation.

The Ceramic Keeper ensures that a more protected design culture will lead to creative human resource development and competitive product development, operates a design protection report center for reporting design piracy cases, and supports a registration agency in the design notification proofing system. By registering in the design notification proofing system, the creator can prove the fact that the design has been created by herself or himself prior to an application of a design registration, such that there is an effect of preventing an imitation and infringement of the design in advance.

3. Representative proposal of amendment to ‘Korean Patent Law’ to shorten processing period of patent trials

Lee Jong-Bae, a member of the National Assembly, representatively proposed a ‘Proposed Partial Amendment to Patent Law’ that provides a basis for having trial investigators to shorten the processing period of patent trials. Korea’s patent trial period is increasing year by year: 6.9 months in 2015, 9.5 months in 2016, 10.5 months in 2017, and 12 months in 2018. The number of trials has increased so rapidly that Korean trial examiners have handled 72 cases compared to 48 cases in America, 33 cases in Japan and 16 cases in Europe based on the number of handled cases per trial examiner in 2017. In order to shorten the processing period of patent trials, there has been ongoing discussion to establish a trial researcher system that assists the trial examiner to conduct the investigation and research works for trial cases.

Rep. Lee Jong-Bae said, “if the patent dispute is shortened, difficulties of small businesses will be reduced due to prompt processing of cases.”

4. “Supreme Court rules on that ‘Bullsone’ imitated the ‘Red Bull’ trademark,” and remands after quashing the original decision.

Supreme Court Section 2 (Court Judge: Justice Kim Sang-Hwan) said on the 18th that the original decision that determined the plaintiff’s loss is quashed and the case is to be sent back to the Patent Court for the purpose of assigning victory to the plaintiff, at the appellate court trial of a firm name registration nullity suit filed by Red bull against Bullsone. The justice department said that, “a third party cannot register an imitation trademark by using the fact that a trademark recognized as a specific product between domestic and foreign consumers cannot be registered in Korea,” and “it should be judged based on the used period, method, form, scope of use, and transaction status, etc. of the trademark.” The justice department has decided that “the Red Bull trademark has been used as a mark for the Red Bull Racing Team at Formula One (F1) (which is an international car race) since about 2005,” and “it should be regarded as a service mark of a specific person among at least foreign consumers in relation to the operation of the car racing team and the provision of related sports events.”