- IT Patent Examiner Education Center (IPEEC) opens -


On Monday 14:00, April 17th, KIPO (Commissioner JUN, Sang Woo) is having an opening ceremony of the new IT Patent Examiner Education Center (IPEEC) at Information & Communication University (ICU, President: Huh, Woon Na).


Following the rapid growth of IT-related technologies, KIPO’s education project for IT technology is purposed to raise the professionalism of patent examiners, improving their examination quality. Starting for the first time this year, the project assigns the overall development and operation of education programs related to IT technologies to the supervising agency. This year, KIPO is planning to put in an initial amount of KRW 380 million (USD 395 thousand) for this project, and for 5 years, until 2010, the invested budget will be about KRW 3 billion (USD 3.1 million).


The growth of IT field is very rapid, with continuous introduction of convergent technology. In order to follow the rapid growth, educating examiners was suggested as a continuing necessity.


Education will be customized into 27 professional courses to follow the patent application trend of IT areas, including ubiquitous field, home-networking field, and DBM field.. Focusing on practical site experiences, outstanding manpower and equipment from the industrial/academic/research fields will be used to maximize educational effects.


About 400 people, including examiners in IT and related fields, will be participating in the education project. In-depth courses for managers in IT fields, with subjects designed for managers with the rank of bureau/division chiefs, will also be opened to improve the quality of IT examinations.


KIPO’s Electric & Electronic Examination Bureau (Chief LEE, Beom Ho) commented that this IT education project will improve the competitiveness of examiners by letting them learn about the latest technologies from the sites with clarity and precision, and finally, by enabling examiners to provide better protection for IT technologies developed by our IT companies.


According to the patent application trend, next year the number of courses will increase from 27 to 36, expanding to the most recent technological areas such as Wibro, interactive TV, and 4th generation mobile communication.