On April 20, the director of the Intellectual Property Tribunal at the Korean Intellectual Property Office, Song, Ju-Hyun, told that the tribunal is to shorten adjudication period of each case from the current 12 months to 6 months to solve patent disputes as early as possible from December 2006.


To achieve this goal, the KIPO hired 8 more patent judges this year. It will also hire an additional 8 patent judges and transfer judgment assistant staff to patent judges for a new staff organization that will be organized next year.


Particularly, higher priority is to be given to cases regarding a patent right dispute between the parties concerned like a patent nullification trial from this year.


The tribunal has other plans to raise its efficiency.

It will use more ordinary words in claims and court decisions instead of foreign languages or jargons to help people easily understand them.

It will also hold technology presentations or oral hearings to increase clients’ satisfaction.
Besides, there will be other efforts to enhance job training for patent judges and to raise professionalism.


In Korea, one patent judge handles more cases than in other countries, with 94 patent and utility model rights cases in 2000, 104 cases in 2002 and 132 cases in 2004, compared to 78 cases in the U.S. and 50 cases in Japan as of 2003.

In addition, adjudication period has increased from 10 months in 2000 to 14 months in 2003 due to 22.5% of increase in cases for the past 5 years. It fell to 12 months last year thanks to efforts to improve efficiency. It is, however, far short of 6 months in developed countries.