1. The Amendment to Enable Patent Application for Academic Papers and Foreign Languages As Well

 

The amendment to patent law prepared by the KIPO (Commissioner SooWon Lee) is to enhance convenience for the applicant by unifying and simplifying the patent system by reflecting the contents of the PLT, which came into effect in 2005 with a membership of 27 countries.

 

The main contents of the amendment include enabling patent application also in a form of academic paper or foreign language by greatly liberalizing the application forms and strengthening the scheme of the remediation of the right for recovering through prima facie proof the right that lapsed due to not keeping the time limit.  And in 'Legislation Made Easy' difficult legal terms of Chinese characters were changed into easy Korean equivalents, and lengthy and complex legal phrases are replaced with simple terms and paragraphs. In addition, there are improvements that have been proposed in the course of actually handling the patenting process, such as 'Separation of the Detailed Description from Claims in Patent Law', 'Expansion of the Opportunity of Claiming the Domestic Priority', and 'Clarifying the Point of Time of Describing the Purpose.'

 

The KIPO expects the amended patent law to come into effect after December 2012 if the bill is submitted to the National Assembly after going through the collection of the opinions of related organizations.

 

2. Fair Trade Commission to Clamp Down on Patent Right Abuse by Multinational Pharmaceutical Companies from 2011

 

The Fair Trade Commission (Hereinafter, FTC) announced that it would prepare and manage a monitoring system from 2011 to root out acts of market dominance by multinational pharmaceutical companies through abuse of patents related to original medicines and medical supplies.

 

The "evergreening" strategy of multinational pharmaceutical companies taking advantage of patent rights has been controversial in the pharmaceutical industry because they have maintained the continuity of the effectiveness of the invalid patents of medicines and delayed the market entry of generic drugs due to competition between pharmaceutical companies.

 

The types of 'agreement on patent dispute' in the pharmaceutical industry that have been controversial include ▲ the act of maintaining the effectiveness of invalid patents (original medicines) and delaying the competition's new entry of generic drugs and ▲ unlawful agreement (rebate agreement) between competitors in the course of patent disputes.

 

And the types of 'abuse of patent litigation' include ▲ trial for invalidation of a patent and a patent-infringement lawsuit and ▲ the case of unlawfully obstructing the business activities of other businessmen by abusing related legal and administrative procedures in the course of applying for and exercising other intellectual property rights. 

 

The FTC explained that "so we will strengthen law enforcement against the multinational pharmaceutical companies' acts of market dominance and abuse generated in the course of producing and supplying original drugs." 

 

3. The Injunction on a Trademark Not in Use that has Become Well-Known is An Abuse of Trademark Rights 

 

The Seoul Central District Court Civil Section 12 (Chief Judge Park Heui-Seung) recently ruled against the plaintiff in the claim suit for injunction on a trademark (2009 KaHarp104071) that Pan West Company with the main office in Singapore, a golf company which exports and sells golf clubs produced by Umeda Shokai, etc. and had not used its trademark 'KATANA' for a long time but claimed the right as it suddenly became well-known, filed against Katana Golf Co., Ltd., which imports and sells in Korea golf clubs produced by Umeda Shokai, etc., to "prevent the sale of golf supplies attached with the 'KATANA' trademark that is the same as our trademark." The court made it clear in the judgment that "the defendant's trademarks have been advertised and known in this country's major dailies and golf magazines and YTN Broadcasting for several years, and the defendant has achieved a considerable amount of sales in this country by selling golf clubs attached with the defendant's trademarks."

 

The court added, "the times when the defendant's trademarks were used were the times when golf was being popularized so the defendant's trademarks became so well-known as to be recognized by at least general consumers and dealers in this country as trademarks of a specific person around the year of 2007, and the plaintiff had scarcely used the trademark especially in 2002 and 2003 after the sales contract signed with Umeda Shokai, etc. was terminated even if the trademark of this case was registered, but as the defendant's trademarks became suddenly well-known, he imported 200 Kanata golf clubs through another company from 2008 and sold them in this country."

 

4. Patent Troll IV Files Lawsuits against 9 IT Companies of the World

 

Intellectual Ventures (IV), the world largest patent and licensing company, has filed a patent lawsuit for the first time since its foundation. Hynix Semiconductor, a Korean company, was also included in those against which IV, known as 'patent troll' as it owns 30 thousand technological patents, filed the lawsuit. 

According to the Financial Times (FT) dated 9th, IV is known to have filed the lawsuit against 9 IT companies in the Federal Court of Delaware, U. S. A. These are Elpida, Checkpoint, MacAfee, Simantec, Trend Micro, Altera, Lattice, Microsemi, and Hynix. Hynix, along with Elpida of Japan, was charged with piracy of IV's circuit technologies including D RAM and flash memory.

 

IV. established in 2000 by Nason Meierbold, who was the chief technological officer (CTO) of Microsoft (MS), is famous for taking licensing fees from companies who want to use the relevant technologies after buying patents in the IT and bio fields in advance at low prices. The licensing fees earned by IV amount to 2 billion dollars (about 2,300 billion won) yearly. 

 

5. Caltec Files Lawsuits against LG Electronics and Pentec

 

California Institute of Technology (Hereinafter, Caltec) claimed that mobile phone manufactures such as LG Electronics and Pentec of Korea and Nokia infringed upon its own patent rights.

 

Caltec contended in its complaint submitted on 24th to the Federal Court of Los Angeles that these mobile phone manufactures had infringed on its own patent rights for camera-related technologies.

 

Caltec filed lawsuits also against Korea's IT companies Seti and Siloconfile, Toshiba of Japan and ST Micro Electronics of Switzerland in conjunction with this. Caltec demanded compensation for damages contending that the companies deliberately infringed upon the patent rights. Caltec had filed patent right infringement suits against 6 camera manufacturers including Canon and Nikon also last year. 

 

6. WIPO to Make Japanese Comic Books for Education and Promotion of Prevention of Infringement on Intellectual Property Rights

 

WIPO will make and distribute Japanese comic books addressed to the youth of the world for the purpose of education and promotion of the protection of intellectual property rights. Japanese comic books are recognized to have a great educational effect because they are very familiar with the children and youth of the world.

 

According the Nihon Geijai dated 22nd, the WIPO under the UN plans to produce educational promotional materials utilizing Japanese comic books in order to let the users be well aware of the maleficence of illegal reproduction.

 

The WIPO is offering prizes to amateur and professional cartoonists in Japan. The winners will receive prize money of 1,200,000 Yen and intellectual property rights. The story should be at least 50 pages long and will be translated into six languages including English, French, Chinese and Arabic and distributed online.