1. Korean Fair Trade Commission prevents foreign IT companies from abusing intellectual property rights

Guidelines preventing foreign multinational IT companies like Qualcomm who have patent rights from abusing their intellectual property rights (IPR) have been made. The Fair Trade Commission (hereinafter the "FTC") on April 6^th announced that it made up guidelines for checking the undue exercise of intellectual property rights, including basic principles related to the application of fair trade laws and types of specific abuses, and would implement them from April 7^th.

The guidelines specify the types of how major patent rights can be abused and are expected to act as a tool to regulate foreign multinational firms' IPR abuses. The measure came out after The FTC Promulgation, which was intended to apply to IPR abuses occurring in international contracts, was appealed and there were no relevant guidelines left.

2. U.S. ITC states, "LG Electronics did not infringe on Whirlpool patent rights"

The legal disputes between LG Electronics and Whirlpool Corporation which lasted for around 2 years ended by the United States International Trade Commission (ITC) finally rejecting Whirlpool's application. In February the court finally ruled that LG had not infringed on Whirlpool's patent rights; however, Whirlpool filed a protest during the two-week application period. In addition to and separate from the ITC decision, the same proceedings are underway in the Delaware State Court and the final ruling is expected at around the end of the year.

3. New York District Court rules that "human DNA cannot be patented"

With 20% of human genes being bound by patent rights, this court ruling is expected to greatly contribute to the popularization of using genes to treat diseases. According to the Associated Press and other foreign news agencies, Judge Robert Sweet of New York District Court on March 29 ruled that patent rights on breast cancer (BRCA) genes, which increase the breast cancer incident rate by 7 times and raise the ovarian cancer incident rate as well, be revoked.

In his decision Mr. Sweet cited a precedent by the Federal Supreme Court which said that "the refining of part of nature cannot be a patent" and said that "the BRCA genes extracted for diagnosis kits are not different from natural human genes." He explained that the scientific achievement of the discovery of the gene was recognizable but it could not be a patent. The ruling was in conformity with the principle that natural materials cannot be patented and only inventions may be patented.

4. KEIT notes, "Korea's IT patent competitiveness is half that of the U.S."

The Korea Evaluation Institute of Industrial Technology (KEIT) researched the technological competitiveness of major countries based on their IT-related patent applications and found out that Korea's IT patent competitiveness was just 58% compared to that of the United States which was ranked at 100%. The United States was followed by Japan (63%), and Europe (53%) showed a slightly lower score than Korea. China (32%) was well behind Korea.

By sector, Korea's display patents were considered to have global competitiveness. Korea (100%) surpassed Japan (90.9%) and the United States (87.8%). In the areas of digital TV and broadcasting, Korea (80.6%) was behind the United States (100%) but was better than Japan (61.4%) and Europe (59.1%). On the other hand, as for next generation mobile communications and next generation computing, Korea lagged far behind the U.S. at 27.5% and 23.4%, respectively (around a quarter of the U.S. scores).