KIPO to amend practice to facilitate international applications

The Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) is considering accepting broad goods descriptions from next year in international applications designating Korea under the Madrid Protocol. This possible practice change was prompted by statistics published at the end of last year, which show that 91.9% of international applications designating Korea are refused ex officio - in most cases because the designation of goods does not comply with the particular goods specification required by KIPO.

KIPO's examination of international applications designating Korea

KIPO is also considering relaxing its practice with regard to other procedures: firstly, notifications, such as the notification of ex officio provisional refusal, would no longer be sent to the applicant - only the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) would receive them. Secondly, the terms for responding to ex officio provisional refusals (about two months) and for filing appeals of refusal decisions (about one month) would be extended as they are not considered long enough at the moment.

The Madrid Protocol became operational in Korea on April 10 2003. The number of international applications designating Korea from April 2003 to September 2004 is as follows:

These figures can be broken down by country in the following way:

As of September 2004, Germany had filed the most applications designating Korea, followed by France and Switzerland. The type of goods for which each country filed shows the country's competitiveness in a particular industry. For instance, for Germany a large proportion of the goods are types of machinery, for France the main products are cosmetics and for Switzerland they are usually goods made from precious metals, such as watches.

The United States has filed few applications designating Korea since the Madrid Protocol became operational in the United States in November 2003. However, WIPO statistics show that Korea is designated in 50% of international applications filed with the US Patent and Trademark Office.

The number of international applications filed through KIPO under the Madrid Protocol is as follows:

The number of applications is broken down by country as follows:

The number of international applications filed through KIPO between April 2003 and September 2004 is 199. China, Japan and Germany were the most frequently designated countries. This corresponds to Korea's main trading partners for 2003. A total of 57 countries were designated in these international applications, which is close to the total number of Madrid Protocol contracting parties.

Jay Young-June Yang, Kim & Chang, Seoul