South Korea Military Fights High Price Of Patented R&D

Korea Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) Commissioner Young-min Kim has joined military leaders and patent attorneys in signing a “Working agreement for the building of a military intellectual property (IP) ecosystem.” A key aim is to avoid high-cost private-sector patent monopolies on military R&D.

The KIPO Commissioner was joined by the Korea Army (chief of staff, General Jung-hwanCho), Korea Air Force (chief of staff, General Ilhwan Sung), and the Korea Patent Attorneys Association (President Dong-yeol Yun), at the Korean Army and Air Force headquarters in Gyeryongdae, South Chungcheong, on 8 April, KIPO said in a press release. The measure is “a follow-up to the agreement on the necessity to raise awareness of IP among military personnel and cultivate their ability to create IPs,” it said.

KIPO said that a lack of IP management in the Korean military has led to private companies having exclusively registered patents based on military research and development. The companies have exercised their monopoly rights which raised production prices, making the goods more expensive.

“To ensure the justifiable return of rights for the military’s R&D outcomes and problematic patents, as well as to retrieve unfair profits, the need to systematically manage the military’s IP was acknowledged,” it said. “For this, the Korea Army established an organization to exclusively manage and create IPs in June last year and enacted its ‘Regulations on managing IP rights.’ The Korea Air Force is currently working to establish its own organization responsible for managing IPs.”

The army and air force will use patent attorneys to improve the expertise of these IP management organisations.

KIPO will give access to the army and air force to its online educational resources and training, and plans to expand IP knowledge training to general military personnel.

Other plans include developing a system to “manage and compensate military employees’ inventions and hold invention contests for military personnel, which can help improve IP creation and usage,” it said.

The working agreement is aimed at expanding the scope of cooperation among KIPO, the Korea Army and Air Force, and the Korea Patent Attorneys Association, the release said.