1. Supreme Court changes the precedent “If the reason for trademark invalidation is clear, it is proper to dismiss the lawsuit for infringement prohibition”

Supreme Court Unanimity System (Chief Judge: Justice Shin Young-chul) announced that it confirmed the original verdict that was ruled against the plaintiff at the trial at the Supreme Court in a lawsuit for demanding trademark infringement prohibition and damages and changed the existing precedent related to this.  The lawsuit was filed by Company A which is a manufacturer of synthetic wood for construction against Company B which uses the same name.  The Court ruled in the written judgment that if it is clear that trademark registration should be invalidated by the judgment of Supreme Court Unanimity System, even before the trial decision of registration invalidation on registered trademark “하이우드(High wood)” or “HI WOOD” is finally ruled, the lawsuit for demanding trademark infringement prohibition and damages is equivalent to an abuse of rights, so it should be dismissed.

2. Daesang Chongga vs Hasunjung CJ … Lawsuit filed against kimchi manufacturing patent

Daesang FNF, which produces and sells Chongga kimchi, filed a patent right infringement prohibition suit against CJ CheilJedang, which manufactures Hasunjung kimchi, with the Seoul Central District Court, saying the latter is producing kimchi by utilizing gelatinized starch.  Daesang FNF raised the suit demanding cessation of production and sale of Hasunjung kimchi that used the patent in question and disuse of the entire quantity of the product, and damages of 100 million won.  Daesang FNF contended “productivity is greatly improved and material costs can be reduced by using gelatinized starch,” saying “the gelatinized starch that has been used in manufacturing Chongga kimchi since 2006 has a function of improving the color and gloss of kimchi because the heating and cooling processes can be omitted thereby unlike the conventional starch.”

3. Four agencies work together to come up with license-patent linkage measures

Korea Food and Drug Administration (KFDA) personnel announced that “four government agencies (KFDA, Ministry of Welfare, KIPO, Fair Trade Commission) will unite to come up with measures for coping with the license-patent linkage system and held the first meeting last month.”  The major items of discussion are ▲ the first generic monopoly period ▲ automatic grace period ▲ speedy handling when the new drug patent right holder files for judgment relating to the system ▲ evergreening countermeasures such as rebate agreement.  The government estimates an annual average of approximately 44 to 92 billion won for sales decrease due to the delay in market entry of generic drugs according to the license-permit linkage system.  Also, it is estimated that the patent dispute ratio will increase from 27% before, to 40% after the introduction of the system.

4. Challenging R&D will be increased by a great deal

The government decided to increase from next year, by a great deal, the challenging of research and development (R&D) that has high development goals despite the risk of failure.  Conventionally there was no standard means of evaluation for the challenging attitude and a score of 10% was given to innovativeness and differentiation.

From January next year, the challenging attitude will be set as a new item for evaluation in selecting R&D projects.  Medium and long term planning-type R&D projects which specifically present the goals of technological development will have a score of 50% allotted to challenging attitude and a score of 20% will be allotted to the short-term free contest type projects proposed personally by the researcher.  They explained that this is to solve the problem that conventionally project implementing organizations file patent applications in preparation for evaluation, but patent registration necessary for commercialization was not satisfactory.

5. World top five trademark-strong countries converge in Korea

The KIPO will host the 2013 annual meeting of TM5 (Trademark Five), which is a consultative body of the world five top trademark-strong countries.  The TM5 member countries are America, Japan, Europe, China and Korea, to which the companies of this country submit the most foreign trademark applications.  These countries recognize the problem of the malicious filing of trademark applications and plan to devise a scheme to cope with the problem.  Annoyed by similar trademarks or imitative trademarks in China and Southeast Asia, it is expected that damage to domestic companies due to imitative trademarks will be reduced furthermore by the participation of China as a member of TM5 in the latter half of the year.

6. No substance in domestic patents

According to the KIPO, the number of domestic patent applications created from the R&D projects supported by the government for the past five years (2007 to 2011) has increased about 8.5% yearly from 13,691 in 2007 to 18,983 in 2011.  The number of technology transfer contracts that include government R&D patents and the income from technical transfer are increasing 11% and 13.9% respectively every year, so patent utilization is expanding continuously.  Although patent productivity, which shows the number of patent applications per 10 billion won of R&D investment is very high compared with foreign research institutes, the income from technology transfer per item showed no more than 1/10 compared with the university and public research institutes of America and 2/3 of that of Canada.  The R&D patent productivity of domestic universities is 1.93 patents and that of the public research institutes is 1.04 patents, which are both much higher than 0.26 for the universities of America and 0.4 for the universities of Japan.