The Korea Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) proposed an initiative to relieve the IP divide between advanced and developing countries and made public its intention to act as a bridge between the two sides at the recent meeting of the IP5 Heads Meeting, held in France from June 4 to 6, 2012, KIPO Commissioner Kim Ho-Won said. 

“Korea has an unprecedented record of rising from a developing country to an IP powerhouse, and the country has been proactively implementing projects to provide support to developing countries through channels such as World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC),” he said in an interview with NewsWorld on July 9 in which he spoke of KIPO’s IP policies and international relations. 

“I, the commissioner of KIPO, which I hope will become a more independent, performance-based executive agency, have called for increasing the general public’s IP-awareness in the direction of KIPO’s 2012 policy to upgrade the quality of IP, proliferate IP quantitatively, and drive sustainable growth,” he said. 

“KIPO devotes itself to implementing key policies such as the innovating of IPR-oriented R&D, the fostering of IP experts and the strengthening of SMEs’ IP capabilities,” Kim said.

Dr. Kim took office as the KIPO commissioner in May 2012. Kim joined the Korean government in 1983 as deputy director of the Ministry of Trade and Industry. Since then, he has been actively involved in Korea’s major industrial policies and technology policies. His previous position was Deputy Minister for National Agenda in the Prime Minister’s Office. During his service at the Prime Minister’s Office, Kim led the Strategic Planning Group on IP to build a system that maximizes the creation and use of IP rights in Korea. He also drew up the IP Master Plan and worked towards the enactment of the Framework Act on IP. The following are excerpts of his interview.

Question: You participated in the IP5 Heads Meeting, held in France from June 4 to 6. Would you tell us about the focus of the meeting and its achievements?

Answer: The IP5 Heads Meeting, the meeting of the heads of the world’s five largest IP offices, was significant for me as it was the first international event I attended since I took office as KIPO commissioner. In particular, it served as a great opportunity for Korea’s new KIPO commissioner to meet with the heads of the IP5, which handles 75 percent of the world’s patent applications, and Dr. Francis Gurry, director general of WIPO, and address the pending issues of each office and share our future visions.

The IP5 heads had an exchange of views on the joint development of the Global Dossier, the first step in establishing a global cyberspace IP office, among many other outcomes. Patent applicants so far have to inquire to each IP office about their application’s progress. However, when the scheme is put in place in 2016, it would greatly improve patent management by enabling each office to share information on patent examinations in cyberspace simultaneously. Representatives from the private sector who attended the IP5 Heads Meeting for the first time welcomed the scheme. 

KIPO proposed an initiative to make joint efforts to relieve the IP divide between advanced and developing countries and made public its intention to act as a bridge between the two sides. Korea has an unprecedented record of rising from a developing country to an IP powerhouse, and the country has been proactively implementing projects to provide support to developing countries through channels, such as WIPO and APEC. I believe that our experiences and knowhow will contribute to alleviating the IP divide through IP5. 

Q: Korea is an active member of TM5, which has been expanded from TM4 by including China. What changes and benefits will this bring to Korean companies?

A: TM5 was inaugurated this past May as an institutional trademark cooperation mechanism, which is composed of the top five trademark powerhouses °™ Korea, the US, Japan, Europe, and China. The member countries aim to promote exchanges of information on each other’s trademark systems, establish user-friendly regimes and harmonize their trademark systems. KIPO, which has taken lead in setting international patent norms as a member of IP5, now joins TM5 to expand its international influences from patents to trademarks. 

KIPO expects that TM5 will contribute much to enhancing Korean companies’ trademark competitiveness overseas. First of all, Korean companies will see damages stemming from similar and imitative trademarks overseas dwindle dramatically. This is the reason the five member countries, recognizing the problems surrounding bad faith filings, now strive to explore ways of coping with the issues. In particular, Korean companies, which have been a major target of imitative trademarks in China, will likely benefit much from the inauguration of TM5. 

TM5 will also allow Korean firms to establish trademark filing strategies more easily by acquiring information on trademark regimes of the related countries in advance when they make inroads overseas. The five member economies are working on the development of a website to search the countries’ trademarks in cyberspace as part of their collaboration efforts. The projected website will enable companies to cut down on the cost and time for searching for trademarks before establishing strategies to register their trademarks abroad. 

Q: Developing countries are trying to solicit support and cooperation to take their cue from Korea, an example country of patent administration. What collaboration projects is KIPO pushing ahead with developing countries?

A: As I mentioned above, the international community’s attention and hopes are mounting on Korea, which has risen to the top five IP powers.

Now that Korea joined the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Development Assistance Committee in 2010 and hosted the Busan Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation Fourth High Level Forum in 2011, the nation has become a full-fledged development assistance donor country. Korea is now carrying out diverse IP support projects for developing countries. 

First of all, we implement a project to provide appropriate technologies to enhance the quality of the lives of people from developing countries. Appropriate technologies are referred to as technologies whose values are not high in advanced countries but are high in developing countries. We’re exploring appropriate technologies from their patent information to address the pending issues of developing countries such as the supply of water, food, and energy in collaboration with non-governmental organizations and companies. In 2010, KIPO offered to the nation of Chad technologies related to the manufacturing of dried mango and charcoal for cooking, using the sediments of sugar canes. We also developed a water purifier that can operate without electricity in 2011 and plan to supply 100 units to Cambodia.

Secondly, we provide assistance in the branding of local goods of developing countries, so they can be sold at fair prices. KIPO provided support in the branding of Chad’s dried mangos. Under the One Village One Brand Project, established in 2011 to brand excellent and indigenous goods in the APEC region, KIPO provided support in branding China’s bamboo textile goods and Chile’s fruit cocktails. 

Thirdly, we offer a hands-on educational program to public officials and students from developing countries at the International Intellectual Property Training Institute of KIPO, to strengthen developing countries’ IP capability. KIPO conducted such programs as seminars and workshops in Vietnam, Peru and 28 other countries on 13 occasions in 2011.

KIPO currently runs a project to assist developing countries’ automation based on the internationally recognized KIPONet’s infrastructure technology. We’re offering an official development assistance project to spread KIPONET’s infrastructure technology to establish automation systems for Mongolia and Azerbaijan while planning to embark on such a program to the African Regional Intellectual Property Organization. 

KIPO also carries out an IP-sharing project to develop and spread to developing countries IP automation content such as IP Panorama, an e-learning product to explain the relevance and importance of IP issues from a business perspective, and IP Expedite, both jointly developed by KIPO in cooperation with WIPO, APEC, and other international organizations.

Q: Korea offers the fastest patent examination services in the world, which is excellent in terms of quality. What steps are in place to retain and evolve the patent examination system?

A: Customer-friendly patent examination services depend on how fast they are made and how much quality can be secured.

The nation’s patent examination period stood at 16.8 months in 2011, about a year faster than the 28 months in the US and 25 months in Japan. KIPO plans to cut down on the period by two months this year. 

The quality of patent examinations has been recognized globally, as foreign companies’ requests for Korea’s international searches under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) surged from 2,853 cases in 2007 to 15,716 cases in 2011. Korea saw the number of patents and utility model applications amount to 191,581 cases in 2011, representing an annual average growth rate of 3.1 percent in the latest decade and requests for PCT international searches stand at 25,667 case in 2011, showing an annual average growth rate of 10.4 percent in the latest three years. 

KIPO recruits examiners every year to ease growing examination workload. It added 423 examiners over the recent decade, including 70 examiners in 2011, and plans to increase the number on a continual basis.

We’ve have raised the rate of outsourcing prior art searches for PCT international searches from 49.6 percent in 2011 to 89.9 percent in 2012 in order to relieve examiners’ work load and enhance the quality of examinations. 

In addition, KIPO strives to raise examination productivity by enhancing its examination-related computer system. To this end, it invested twenty billion Korean won in establishing KIPONet III for three years since 2010 and will continue to ramp up the examination processing system plans by improving the prior-art-search system by 2014. I have no doubt such investments in the examination infrastructure will accelerate the work processing, cut down the pendency period and raise the examination quality. 

Furthermore, KIPO has expanded cooperative mechanisms to share the outcomes of examinations among major countries in order to ease backlogs stemming from the duplicating of applications and to enhance the quality of examinations. 

We plan to implement comprehensive measures such as the expansion of examination manpower, upgrading of on-line systems and enhancing examiners’ expertise so that Korea can retain the world-class pendency period and quality control. 

Q: You’ ve called for a policy shift for raising IP-awareness among the general public. What does it mean and what policies will you employ to this end?

A: IP mechanisms are designed to innovate the way IP inventers and creators can conduct creative activities in a stable fashion and contribute to the growth of the national economy by creating excellent IP.

Korea has made strides in quantitative growth as the nation ranked fourth in terms of the number of patent applications in 2010; first in terms of the number of patent applications per $1 billion of GDP and placed sixth in standard patent registrations in the world. But Korea posted a $6.8 billion technology trade deficit in 2010, fraught with structural woes such as the widening patent capability gap between large and small companies and between the Seoul metropolitan area and provincial districts °™ growth in the IP sector is failing to have synergetic effects to the development of the national economy.

As 2012 policy direction of KIPO, I have publicized IP popularization to upgrade the quality of IP, proliferate IP quantitatively and drive qualitative and sustainable growth.

KIPO devotes itself to implementing key policies, such as the innovating of IPR-oriented R&D, fostering of IP experts and strengthening of SMEs’ IP capabilities.

Firstly, we plan to upgrade and expand the linkage of IP and R&D, which accounts for the bulk of creating IP. KIPO will reflect IPR information at all stages ranging from R&D thesis exploration, planning, and execution to outcome management so as to prevent overlapping investments and ensure quality management for creating standard patents. For example, we feel the need to maximize patented technology trend searches on government R&D, which are now carried out on only 56 percent of the whole government R&D, and also expand the searches on the R&D projects of local governments and public institutions as well as private R&D projects.

Secondly, we plan to cultivate expert manpower in increasing the public’s IP-awareness and enhance educational quality and quantity by establishing level-specific educational regimes. We will strengthen a course of fostering strategy experts for the linkage of IP and R&D and train R&D strategy consultants for the link between business administration and IPR strategies. And we plan to run a program for raising the CEOs’ awareness of IP administration and provide IP manpower with tailored training courses. Moreover, we plan to expand the base of IP talents by enlarging and raising the quality of the fundamental IP education in universities and upgrading the invention and IP-related content in the curricula of primary, middle and high schools.

Lastly, KIPO plans to help SMEs ramp up their IP capabilities, which are insufficient in IPR creation, protection and utilization due to a lack of capital and manpower despite their essential roles in the national economy. In particular, we have accelerated our bid to develop provincially-located promising SMEs into IP stars by supporting SME-specific consulting services such as patent management, brand, and design development. KIPO also plans to provide support in building a system designed to reflect patent strategies in cultivating regional strategic industries.