- Subjects of preferential examination expanded for utility model rights registration/application -


In order to allow applicants to conveniently use preferential examination for utility model rights, KIPO (Commissioner: JUN, Sang Woo) is planning to further expand the subjects’ patent applications for preferential examination.
KIPO is also planning to drastically relieve the conditions for preferential examination application.


The backgrounds for such expansion are:

- The validity of utility model rights registration/application is 10 years from the application date. In comparison, this is significantly shorter than patent applications are, 20 years from the application date.

- 67% of the overall utility model rights registration/applications are filed by individuals.

- Utility model rights registration/applications have many technologies with short life-cycles.

For these reasons, preferential examination is more necessary for utility model rights registration/application than for patent applications.

In general examination, applicants have to wait 10 months from the application date to receive the result of examination. In Comparison, preferential examination results are given within 3 months from the application date. (See Table 1, 2 in Attachment 1)

The previous subjects for preferential examination were limited to the ones acknowledged for urgent processing such as applications for the progress of and the preparing for self-launching, or applications useful to prevent, pollution (See Attachment 2). In addition, documents proving the subjects of preferential examination had to be submitted separately. Such complicated procedures were inconvenient to individual applicants using preferential examination.


According to the draft to expand the subjects for preferential examination of utility model rights (See Attachment 3), the applicants can apply for general examination as they apply for utility model rights.
They can apply again for preferential examination within 2 months to unlimitedly use preferential examination for utility model rights.


Applicants who need to secure rights swiftly due to the short life-cycle of the technology can freely use preferential examination for utility model rights without submitting additional documents. Such changes will maximize the convenience of individuals using preferential examination, relieving them from the difficulties of submitting the required documents.



KIPO is planning to launch this expansion on October 1st, 2006. In addition, to allowing all applicants to use preferential examination at minimum cost, KIPO is planning to introduce the fixed minimum-fee system in preferential examination of patent applications.
The fixed minimum-fee system was launched in May 1st, 2006 to preferential examination in utility model rights.


1) Preferential examination: a system to examine certain applications in advance regardless of their application order. These applications include the ones that are acknowledged of needing urgent processing in order to give proper protection to the public benefit and invention itself.

2) Fixed minimum-fee system: Previously the application fee for patent’s preferential examination included base fee (KRW 135,000) + additional fee per articles (KRW 23,000 /article). In other words, an additional fee was added as the number of articles increased. Recently, KIPO has repealed the additional fee and fixed the cost for preferential examination at KRW 167,000.