The Ministry of Intellectual Property, marking its first anniversary, is strengthening advance monitoring of patent disputes involving core national technologies such as semiconductors. It will also expand support so Korean companies can move beyond defensive responses to patent disputes and actively use their patent portfolios to generate revenue. Now in its second year since being elevated from the Korean Intellectual Property Office, the ministry plans to concentrate its policy resources on commercializing and monetizing intellectual property (IP).
Kim Yong-sun, Minister of Intellectual Property, met with Seoul Economic Daily at the ministry's Seoul office on the 27th and said, "In our first year, we focused on laying the groundwork to convert the ideas and technologies of our citizens into real growth assets for companies and the country." He added, "From the second year on, it is time to begin producing visible results on that foundation." The ministry was launched last October after being elevated from the Korean Intellectual Property Office, and Kim took office as its first minister in November of the same year.
For about a year since taking office, Kim has focused on protecting core national technologies such as semiconductors. As Korean chipmakers including Samsung Electronics (005930) and SK hynix (000660) enjoy an unprecedented boom driven by the artificial intelligence (AI) wave, he expected attacks from non-practicing entities (NPEs), firms that specialize in monetizing patents, to increase as well. Another burden for Korea was that under the Trump administration in the U.S., inter partes review (IPR) petitions — the main defensive tool Korean companies have used against NPE lawsuits — were being denied institution one after another. In June, Kim raised these concerns directly with John Squires, U.S. Under Secretary of Commerce and Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and requested institutional changes to curb indiscriminate NPE litigation.
"A month later, I received a letter from Director Squires conveying the U.S. government's position," he said. "Foreign media have recently reported that the U.S. will move the authority to decide whether to institute an IPR from the USPTO director back to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), as it was before, and we have hopes for that." The reason is that if the PTAB decides on IPR institution, petitions would not be denied en masse as they are now. It is difficult to conclude that the ministry's objections had a direct effect, but the development shows that the U.S. is also aware of Korea's concerns.
Reflecting industry input, the ministry will also build a system in November this year to monitor NPEs' patent acquisitions. Previously, Korean companies received NPE-related monitoring information from the ministry once a month; going forward, they will be able to receive real-time analysis of which patents NPEs are buying and which domestic companies could be affected. "Large companies can respond on their own, but small and medium-sized enterprises that lack specialized staff and funding have found it hard to deal with NPE lawsuits," Kim said. "From now on, we will notify companies in advance about patents related to their products among those NPEs have acquired, and link that to expert consulting support."
Kim also stressed that Korean companies need to go beyond defensive responses to patent offensives by overseas NPEs and take the offensive themselves, including collecting royalties from foreign companies. "The global IP royalty market is worth $1.2 trillion, which amounts to another 'semiconductor market,' but Korea's share of it is less than 2%," he said. "Like David and Goliath, if Korea is to check China — armed with cost competitiveness — in the U.S. and European markets, it needs a stone called 'overseas patents.'" That is the backdrop for the ministry's push to nurture IP monetization specialists, a Korean version of NPEs, and to provide 40 billion won in funding.
Along with protecting core national technologies, another area Kim is watching is AI. As AI lowers the barrier to filing patents, cases of abuse are also emerging. Patent filings in the first half of this year rose 29% from a year earlier, with filings by individuals surging 130%. Six out of every 10 individual filings were made without a patent attorney. "An increase in filings as AI use spreads is a natural phenomenon, but it is creating administrative burdens such as longer examination periods, as well as issues in the standards for judging patentability," he said. "Going forward, at sites undergoing manufacturing AX (AI transformation), stakeholders will be diverse — the company, the plant, IT developers, employees holding tacit knowledge — so determining IP ownership will not be simple either." In June, he proposed jointly discussing standards for AI-related patents at the IP5 heads of intellectual property offices meeting.
The ministry will also fully implement a "K-brand certification system" in October to curb counterfeit goods circulating indiscriminately overseas. It will focus as well on blocking overseas leakage of core domestic technologies, drawing on its technology police force, which has grown to 61 officers this year. "The IP system is an institutional bulwark that protects human creativity," Kim said. "In an era when creative ideas become intangible assets and assets for economic innovation and social development, we will work to maximize the effect of intellectual property policy."
