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Newsletter 2020-Autumn
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The Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) established new criteria for submitting digitally-signed documents to cope with the limited in-person transactions amid the ongoing spread of COVID-19, which went into effect on June 17, 2020.According to the criteria, a foreign applicant may submit a digitally signed power of attorney when appointing a local agent in Korea. However, such doc...
The Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) has adopted so-called “positive examination” to assist an applicant in speedily obtaining a patent with a reasonable scope of protection by increasing the communication between the examiner and the applicant and having the examiner provide active suggestions on claim amendments.To this end, KIPO is currently operating various types of the examiner ...
The Ministry of Food and Drug Safety (MFDS) published a list of drugs whose generics were not approved, among the drugs, for which patents rights registered in the Green List expired due to the patent term expiration or invalidation, for the first time in January 2020 and updated the list on July 28, 2020.The MFDS analyzed 2,762 patents for 1,558 drugs registered in the Green List by the first ...
In February 2020, the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) ruled in favour of LG Chem in the trade secret infringement suit filed against SK Innovation. As it became known that the patent dispute between the two Korean companies was litigated before the ITC and the U.S. Federal Court due to lack of a discovery system in Korea, there has been a growing demand for requesting the introd...
Patent
As the Untact industry has grown due to the recent spread of COVID-19, cyber attacks aiming at the Untact industry are also increasing. As such, blockchain technology with excellent security is attracting attention. According to the latest statistical data of the Korean Intellectual Property Office, while there were 24 patent applications related to blockchain in 2015, the num...
Korean has two systems, Patent Term Extension (PTE) and Patent Term Adjustment (PTA), for extending the patent terms. PTE compensates a patent owner of the pharmaceutical or agrochemical patents requiring an approval or registration for delays caused by the regulatory review process before a product can be commercially marketed while PTA compensates applicants for KIPO-caused delays. ...
Trademark
The Intellectual Property Trial and Appeal Board (IPTAB) of the Korean Intellectual Property Office has recently acknowledged that the mark “” owned by Chapter 4 Corp. (“Chapter 4’s Mark”) is broadly known as a source indicator of a specific person among general consumers in Korea or is at least recognized as a distinctive mark indicating a specific source indicator among a certain group of con...
The Korean Supreme Court ruled that the sale of bags by PLAYNOMORE (a Korean Fashion Company), which combine its own design of eyes with designs that are confusingly similar to famous luxury brand Hermès’ Kelly and Birkin bags, constitutes acts of infringement on Hermès’ economic interests by benefitting from Hermès’ achievements under the Unfair Competition Prevention and Trade Secret Protecti...
The Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) announced that the number of sound mark applications in 2019 jumped up to 44 filings, which has increased by about 7.3 times from 6 filings in 2015.[Number of Filings for Sound Marks for the Last Five Years]A sound mark consisting of a sound which is capable of distinguishing the goods and services of one undertaking from those of other undertaking...
Lee news
Lee International has been offering a wide range of language courses including English, Japanese and Chinese for employees to improve their language skills for better communication with the foreign clients.Recently, Lee International plans to launch a new type of language learning program that allows all employees to access online language courses as early as this autumn, as a face-to-face lang...
Lee International was selected as a best law firm in the fields of patent prosecution and litigation by IAM (Intellectual Asset Management) Patent 1000 in its 2020 Edition.In particular, Managing Partners of Lee International, Terry Taehong KIM and Yoon Suk SHIN, were featured as specialists in patent prosecution.IAM Patent 1000 is a guide that identifies the top patent professionals around the...
