“Our office’s representative Patent Attorney, E Nam HWANG was selected on February 20, 2010 as the twelfth chairman of the Korean Food Professional Engineers Association after a race involving three candidates. This association is a non-profit corporation approved by the Ministry of Health and Welfare, and is formed of 720 technical experts who are specialized in food & biotechnology, and carries out such business as research services or making technical guides which are requested from the Government, local governments and companies.”

1. There is now insurance offering compensation for patent disputes

LIG Damage Insurance announced that they concluded an agreement with the Korean Intellectual Property Office and the Korea Intellectual Property Protection Association (KIPRA) on the 17^th and have become the first in Korea to sell insurance covering the litigation of intellectual property rights. In cases of a small and medium enterprise filing a litigation due to infringement of intellectual property rights such as patents, utility models, designs and trademarks, or inversely being the target of litigation, the insurance will compensate for legal costs including lawyer fees up to five hundred million Won. 

2. "Korea is likely to be excepted again from a watch list for intellectual property rights"

It is prospected that Korea will be excepted for the second time in two years from a watch list for intellectual property rights (IPR), which has been made up every year by the USA to protect U.S. intellectual property rights (IPR).

In a recent written opinion submitted to the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) by the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) formed of U.S. companies having copyrights, the Ministry of Culture confirmed that because Korea’s protection level of intellectual property rights has been affirmatively evaluated, that it would not be necessary to include Korea on the watch list, and said that the Korean government’s efforts to continuously protect copyrights has produced good results.     

3. The KIPO revised patent examination guidelines for biotechnology-related inventions.

The patent examination guidelines, which were revised as of February 2010 based on examination concerns in the field of biotechnology and the actual conditions of examination en force in advanced countries, are as follows:

 ①  The judgment of novelty regarding a well-known gene or protein defined as a function: even if a new use is devised, in a case where a well-known gene or protein itself is claimed, no novelty is to be admitted to it, and one example of the description of a specification regarding a new use is presented.  

②  The judgment of an inventive step regarding polynucleotide fragments or anti-sense strands: in the case of general primers, probes and anti-sense strands related to a well-known gene, under the condition that very remarkable effects thereof have been proven, an inventive step will be admitted to them.

③  The judgment of unity in a case where a variety of well-known genes or proteins are claimed in a Markush type: this should be judged in consideration of the structural contribution to identical or corresponding technical characteristics by the addition of specific examples.

④  The judgment of an inventive step regarding a microorganism belonging to the same genus as another microorganism of a well-known species, the availability of which has been known: in a case where it is difficult to distinguish a microorganism from a well-known microorganism by limiting the microorganism to a name or trust numbers given by an applicant, examples and an explanation should be added so that a clear comparison can be drawn and novelty and an inventive step can thereby be judged.