The Ministry of Intellectual Property (“MOIP”) has announced that the Amended Design Protection Act entered into force on November 28, 2025, to improve the Partial-Substantive Examination System (“PSES”) and to…READ MORE

A major South Korean patent dispute concerning the gastroesophageal reflux disease treatment K-CAB tablets (tegoprazan) reached a resolution on November 20 2025. The Korean Supreme Court affirmed earlier ruling…READ MORE

The South Korean Intellectual Property High Court (the IP High Court) has recently rendered a decision dismissing the use of the ‘abuse of right defence’ in invalidation actions. In the decision, given the diff…READ MORE

Korean IP High Court, Case Nr: 023Na10693In a significant decision for patent holders, Korea's IP High Court has ruled that a foreign company's online listings of products protected by Korean patents on a Chine…READ MORE

On July 11, 2025, the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) implemented a series of amendments to patent and utility model procedures aiming to ease administrative burdens for applicants. The two primary r…READ MORE

In South Korea, similar to the US and other countries, consumer surveys serve as evidence of consumer recognition or perception in trademark practice, including litigation.A trademark survey has varying probati…READ MORE

The South Korean Patent Act has been amended to include “exporting” as one of the acts encompassed by patent infringement. The new law takes effect on July 22 2025.Expansion of the acts constituting patent infr…READ MORE

A new patent term extension (PTE) system will be implemented in South Korea starting July 22 2025. The extension will be capped at 14 years from the date of marketing approval (MA), and the number of patents th…READ MORE

From February 21 2025, a new regulatory data protection system will take effect in South Korea. This will replace the ‘de facto’ data exclusivity that has been provided by the existing drug re-examination syste…READ MORE

As the global marketplace becomes more crowded, we are increasingly seeing similar conflicting trademarks being filed and/or used.Although this trend is common throughout the world, there are significant differ…READ MORE

On January 9 2024, the National Assembly of South Korea passed a bill to revise the Invention Promotion Act (IPA) to simplify the process by which an employer acquires the rights to job-related inventions creat…READ MORE

Rapid advances in the field of AI are impacting almost every industry and business, as well as our daily lives. Undoubtedly, AI is a strong tool for innovation that enables us to create new inventions in variou…READ MORE

On February 20 2024, the South Korean Patent Act and the Unfair Competition Prevention and Trade Secret Protection Act (UCPA) were amended such that punitive damages are available up to five times the actual da…READ MORE

The Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) has been providing a variety of ways to expedite patent examination. However, one of the ironies of this accelerated patent examination system is that the more it …READ MORE

The Intellectual Property Trial and Appeal Board (IPTAB) of the Korean Intellectual Property Office recently released interesting data showingtrends of IPTAB trials involved in intellectual property (IP) disput…READ MORE