Lee International

As of April 1, 2021, if an applicant requests that a design be kept secret, not only will the drawings and photographs for the design, the essentials of the design, and descriptions of the design be kept confidential, but the title of the design and its Locarno classification will also not be disclosed.

The secret design program allows an applicant to request that the design be kept confidential for a certain period of time (up to a maximum of three years from the registration date). If a request is made to keep the design a secret, the design will not be disclosed to the public for a certain period of time, preventing a competitor from imitating the design. In addition, a company can strategically disclose the design of a new product at the time of launching the new product, and thus, the secret design program can be used as a marketing strategy.

Despite such advantages of the secret design program, there were concerns that a company’s new product development trends could have been indirectly exposed to a competitor through the disclosure of the title of the design and classification. However, under the revised secret design law, such details of the design can be kept confidential as well, and as a result, the company’s design development and management strategy will be more comprehensively protected.