Personal consulting services offered by patent attorneys at the complex attract the lion’s share of attention.


“We applied for a patent instead of you, and it was FREE, ha ha,” crows the tagline. The free consulting services became popular among small and medium firms or inventors who are too intellectually challenged to apply or have no legal knowledge of intellectual property rights.

Any application submitted with the help of a Korean patent attorney would usually cost you the huge sum of between several thousand and tens of thousand dollars. As a result, many companies or inventors cannot afford to have their new technology secured by a patent. The free services that have been provided since last year by Busan KIPA(Korean Invention Promotion Association) and KICOX(Korean Industrial Complex) start on Thursdays of the second and fourth weeks every month at the office of Busan Complex. They take the form of personal interviewing by a patent attorney to provide information mainly on patent & utility model application, design registration and trademarks or any other intellectual property rights. There are also comprehensive discussions over intellectual property rights and how to write a statement concerning the entry of an application or a detailed complementary statement involved, a case study of lawsuits for infringement, a review of licensing agreements and so on.

Patent attorney Seong-han Kim working pro bono said, “small and medium companies have their own great technology or ideas, but they’re unwilling to win a patent on them because those intellectual properties have nothing to do with an immediate increase in sales,” adding, “what they need to do now is to take an interest in the recognized future value of the patent and secure it.”


Source: Page 12 of Herald Media dated August 11, 2005)