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Korea has patents, utility models, designs and trade marks. They can all be registered at the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO).
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For patents filed on or after 1 July 1996, the term is 20 years from the date of filing. Before July 1996, Korea made several law changes which affected the term of patents. For patents filed between 1 September 1990 and 30 June 1996, the term was 15 years from the date of publication of the examined application, but not longer than 20 years from the filing date.
For utility models filed on or after 1 July 1999, the term is 10 years from the date of filing. Before July 1999, Korea made several law changes also affecting the term of utility models. For utility models filed between 1 July 1996 and 30 June 1999, the term was 15 years from the filing date. For those filed between 1 September 1990 and 30 June 1996, it was 10 years from the date of publication of the examined application, but not longer than 15 years from the filing date.
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Under the Korean Patent Act and KIPO's Requirements for Patentability, the following are not patentable in Korea:
For more detailed information, please see the Korean Patent Act and KIPO's Requirements for Patentability:
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Yes, but only if the software is recorded on a storage medium (CD-ROM, disc, etc.) and the combination of software and hardware as a whole represents an improvement over the prior art, has a technical result and constitutes a complete technical solution.
You can however get copyright protection for your software under the Copyright Act.
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Yes, Korea joined the PCT on 10 August 1984. Since then, it has been possible to designate Korea in international patent applications filed via the PCT route.
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Yes. Natural or legal persons who do not have a residential or business address in Korea must appoint a professional representative to represent them in patent-prosecution proceedings there.
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Since 1 January 2015, it has been possible to file applications in either Korean or English (before: only in Korean). If you file in English, you must submit a Korean translation within 14 months from the earliest priority date.
For PCT applications entering the national phase in Korea, you must submit a Korean translation within 31 months from the earliest priority date. For PCT applications with an international filing day on or after 1 January 2015, it has been possible to request a one-month extension of the time limit for submitting the Korean translation.
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Yes, the priority period is 12 months from the earliest priority claimed, as stipulated in the Paris Convention. Korea has been a member of the Paris Convention since 4 May 1980.
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The Korean Patent Act includes several provisions which make the filing requirements more flexible. You can obtain an early filing date by
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Yes, in Korea, if your application comprises multiple inventions you may divide it into two or more applications. However, the scope of the descriptions and drawings of the divisional applications may not extend beyond that of those in the original application.
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Yes, both patents and utility models are subject to a prior-art search and to substantive examination for novelty, inventive step and industrial applicability. Utility model applications filed between 1 July 1999 and 30 September 2006 were registered without substantive examination, which was abolished for utility models on 1 July 1999 and then re-introduced on 1 October 2006.
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For both patent and utility model applications, you should submit this request within three years of the date of filing or (for PCT applications) the international filing date.
With regard to filings until 28 February 2017, the time period for submitting the examination request was five years from filing day for patent applications and three years from filing day for utility model applications.
It is also possible to request accelerated examination on certain specific grounds.
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Yes, it has been possible to do this since 1 July 1996. However, if you file a provisional application, earlier publication is possible only after submitting the complete set of claims.
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Yes. Under the Korean Patent Act, any person may furnish the KIPO Commissioner with information and evidence that the invention concerned is not patentable under Article 62 of the Act.
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Two months. The applicant may however request up to four one-month extensions, subject to payment of an additional fee each time. Furthermore, the KIPO Commissioner and the President of the Intellectual Property Tribunal (IPT) may (on request or ex officio) extend the period for submitting a request for a trial by up to 30 days, or even longer in exceptional cases such as applicants living in inaccessible areas.
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No, this is no longer possible. Prior to 1 October 2006, it was possible to file patent and utility-model applications in parallel in order to get early protection for an invention. The registered utility model then had to be withdrawn when the patent was granted. However, this system has now been abolished.
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Yes. With the abolition of dual filing in October 2006, Korea reintroduced the possibility to convert patent applications into utility model applications and vice versa.
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In Korea the annual fees for the first three years have to be paid in a lump sum within three months as from the grant decision. Subsequent annual fees are payable yearly in advance on the anniversary of the first payment.
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Yes: six months as from the expiry date of the original payment period. If you make good the payment during this grace period, you have to pay an amount of up to twice the original fee.
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If you miss not only the annual-fee payment deadline but also the six-month grace period (see above), the patent lapses. However, under Korean patent law there are two different situations in which you may file a request for its restoration:
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Yes. Korean patent law provides for two kinds of extension to the regular patent term:
An easy, step-by-step guide on how to find information on patent-term extensions in the KIPRIS search system is available on the EPO website.
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Between 1 July 2007 and February 2017, the only way to do this was via invalidation proceedings. However, opposition was re-introduced on 1 March 2017, so now two procedures are available again. Invalidation requests challenging one or more claims can now only be filed by interested parties, but any time after grant (and even after the patent has expired). The recently re-introduced opposition procedure can be initiated by anyone, but only within six months as from publication of the granted patent.
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Via the Korea Industrial Property Rights Information Services (KIPRIS) search system, provided by the Korea Institute of Patent Information (KIPI) on behalf of the Korean Patent Office (KIPO). Here you can search English abstracts of Korean patent documents, retrieve comprehensive legal-status information in English, download the full texts of Korean patent documents and obtain English machine translations. Please also have a look at our step-by-step guides for searches in KIPRIS.
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You can access comprehensive legal-status data free of charge from the Korea Industrial Property Rights Information Service (KIPRIS). For each IP right, KIPRIS offers a chronological list of all legal-status events, including post-grant ones such as fee-payment data or litigation information. Most legal-status events are also shown with an English translation. Furthermore, you can access the Korean patent register in KIPRIS for information on patent lapses, term extensions, transfers of rights, etc.
On the “Searching in databases” section of the EPO’s Asian patent information website, we offer a search guide explaining step-by-step how to retrieve legal-status information from KIPRIS.
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There is a fee schedule on the KIPO website.
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There are two ways to access the Korean file wrapper online:
The website of the Korean Patent Attorneys Association gives detailed information about the role of patent attorneys and the services they provide.
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