07 January 2025 
Increase in Punitive Damages for Trademark or Design Infringement Up to Quintuple
Increase in Punitive Damages for Trademark or Design Infringement Up to Quintuple On December 27, 2024, the Korean National Assembly passed amendments to the Trademark Act and the Design Act to increase the maximum award of punitive damages for a trademark or design infringement from three times the amount of damages to five times. According to the amendments, if the infringement of…
03 January 2025
Trademark Opposition Period to be Shortened from 2 Months to 30 Days Starting July 2025
Trademark Opposition Period to be Shortened from 2 Months to 30 Days Starting July 2025 A partial amendment to the Korean Trademark Act, aimed at shortening the trademark opposition period from two months to thirty (30) days, was passed by the National Assembly on December 27, 2024. Under the current Korean Trademark Act, if an examiner does not identify any grounds for refusa…
02 January 2025
Patent Protection Against Exportation of Infringing Products and Limits on Patent Term Extensions
Enforcement of Patent Rights Against Exportation of Infringing Products Under the current Patent Act, acts of manufacturing, using, assigning, leasing, or importing a patented product, or offering to assign or lease a patented product (including displaying the product for the purpose of assignment or lease) are considered as acts of working the patented invention. The Patent Act will be…
31 October 2024
Changes to Correction of Inventorship and Inventor Information Requirements (Effective November 1)
According to the revised Enforcement Rules of the Korean Patent Act, effective November 1, 2024, the requirements for correcting inventorship and the requirements for providing inventor information at the time of filing have been changed to clearly identify the true inventor(s), as summarized in the table below. Item Current From November 1, 2…
02 May 2024
Letter of Consent for Trademarks Now Available in South Korea
Under the previous Trademark Act, a trademark application may be refused if it is deemed similar or identical to pre-existing trademark applications or registrations owned by third parties. This posed an inconvenience for trademark applicants, as they had to undergo an assignment process to align the owners of their application with the owners of pre-existing trademark applications or registr…
30 January 2024
Increase in Punitive Damages for Patent Infringement and Trade Secret Misappropriation Up to Quintuple
On January 25, 2024, the Korean National Assembly passed an amendment to the Patent Act to increase the maximum award of punitive damages for a patent infringement from three times the amount of damages to five times. According to the amendment, if the infringement of a patent right or an exclusive license thereof is found to be willful, the court may award punitive damages up to quint…
10 October 2023
Introduction of Coexistence Agreement for Trademarks in South Korea
The amendment to the Trademark Act, which allows the Coexistence Agreement for trademarks, was passed by the National Assembly on October 6, 2023. Under the current Trademark Act, a trademark application may be refused if it is deemed similar or identical to pre-existing trademark applications or registrations owned by third parties. This posed an inconvenience for trademark applicants, as…
01 September 2023
Changes in Accelerated Examination and Patent Term Adjustment in Korea (Effective January 1, 2024)
On August 24, 2023, the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) announced a bill revising the Enforcement Decrees of the Korean Patent Act and the Korean Utility Model Act, with key revisions of (i) reducing options for requesting accelerated examination and (ii) expanding delays attributable to the applicant that are excluded from the calculation of patent term adjustment (PTA). …
01 June 2023
Korea Relaxes Design Filing Procedures for Related Applications, Grace Period for Novelty Claims and Priority Claims
The Korean National Assembly has approved a bill to amend the Korean Design Protection Act (“Design Act”) on May 25, 2023, in order to facilitate obtaining and protecting their design rights for design holders. The amendments address several procedural shortcomings in the current Design Act that have impeded design holders from effectively safeguarding their rights. The current Design …
17 August 2022
IPTAB’s Favorable Decision on Inventive Step of Laser Device with the focus mechanism
The subject invention related to a laser device in which a lasing material is an organic material. The Intellectual Property Trial and Appeal Board (IPTAB) reversed the Final Rejection of the subject invention determining that the subject invention has an inventive step over prior art references (“D1” to “D3"). In the decision, the IPTAB conceded Lee International’s arguments th…
