Notes on Korean IP practice.

Prior-art search determines registrability, claim scope, and office-action cost. Here is why it must precede drafting.

Filing without a prior trademark search risks refusal, invalidation, and infringement claims. Here is why the search must come first.

How a foreign applicant without a Korean address or place of business should appoint a Korean patent attorney — POA, e-signature, NDA, and fee structure.

Lack of distinctiveness under Article 33 of the Korean Trademark Act is the leading refusal ground. Covers the seven categories, naming workarounds, and acquired distinctiveness.

A practitioner's guide to Korean patent annuity fees — fee schedule, normal and grace periods, the 3-year bulk discount, SME and individual reductions, and recovery after lapse.

Korea's copyright registration provides four practical advantages — author and creation-date presumptions, fault presumption, term extension, and customs filings. A practitioner's guide to the procedure and the 2024 fee reductions.

How trademark owners reclaim domains from cybersquatters — the UDRP three-element test, Korea's IDRC procedure, proving bad faith, and post-decision transfer or cancellation.

Korean patent invalidation trials succeed in roughly half of all cases. A practitioner's guide to standing, grounds, procedure, and the retroactive effect of a final decision.

Recipes are patentable in Korea as food compositions or processes, but the inventive-step bar is the gating issue. We unpack what works, with the Coca-Cola / KFC trade-secret playbook.

Korean trademarks must be renewed every 10 years. A practitioner's guide to the one-year filing window, six-month grace period, surcharges, and split payment.

Korean BM/SW patents require a hardware-coupled claim. We compare KIPO eligibility with the US Alice/Mayo §101 framework and walk through workable claim patterns.

Korea runs two examination tracks for designs — partial and full. Compare scope, eligible Locarno classes, time to grant, and post-grant stability to choose the right path.

Patents trade publication for 20-year exclusivity; trade secrets trade silence for indefinite protection. We compare the two using Korean law and the Coca-Cola example.

A patent attorney compares PCT national phase entry and Paris-route direct filing in Korea: 31-month deadline, translation costs, KIPO fee reductions, examination.

A standard Korean trademark takes 10-14 months to register; expedited examination delivers a decision in roughly 2 months. Eligibility, fees, and the 2024 rule changes.

Korean design rights protect appearance; patents protect function. Compare term, fees, dual-protection options, and GUI/screen-design filings under KIPO practice.

How to pick the right NICE classes and use the 10-goods-per-class baseline to file an effective Korean trademark — including the 13th-edition (2026) changes.

Korean courts test design infringement through whole-view observation supplemented by dominant-feature analysis. A practitioner's four-step framework, from product similarity to design-around limits.

Process, timeline, fees, NICE classes, distinctiveness, and the 2024 coexistence-consent system: a Korean attorney's full guide for foreign trademark filers entering Korea.

Tracking the DABUS case across Korea, the US, EU, UK, Australia, and South Africa — and what the natural-person rule means in practice for AI-assisted inventions in Korea.

Korea's related design system protects variations of a base design as separate rights. Filing window, requirements, exclusive-licence limits, and practical strategies.

Walk through the five-stage PCT timeline, 30/31-month national-phase deadlines, international search and preliminary exam, and the official fees from KIPO as a Receiving Office.

Compare the term, inventive-step bar, and filing fees of Korean patents vs. utility models, with practical guidance on which to choose for your invention.

iphere's AI trademark search combines automatic KIPRIS query generation tuned with attorney know-how and per-mark phonetic and conceptual similarity analysis. A practitioner's walkthrough with result interpretation.

Korean priority examination cuts pendency from 14.7 to 2.1 months on average. A practitioner's guide to grounds, fees, PPH, and the one-month super-fast track.

A practical, side-by-side comparison of trademark filing, opposition, renewal, and foreign-applicant rules in Korea, the US, Japan, and China.

Article 119 of the Korean Trademark Act lets anyone cancel an unused registration after three years. Who can file, what counts as use, and what owners must keep on hand.

Korean trademark law recognizes non-traditional marks — color, sound, hologram, motion, and position. We map registration requirements, distinctiveness proof, and global comparisons.

Practical Korean IP changes for 2026 — Nice classification 13th edition, easier partial-design filings, faster patent examination targeting 14 months, and the new direct-transfer route for rightful design owners.

Korean employee-invention rules — who owns the right, how the employer can succeed to it, what counts as fair compensation, and the 2024 statutory amendments plus the Supreme Court ruling practitioners need to know.

iphere offers deferred invoicing for foreign IP agents — NET 30 unlocks via domain match, NET 60 via engagement-letter review. Step-by-step setup for foreign associates working with us.

How to run a Freedom-to-Operate analysis before launching in Korea, design around problem patents, and account for the doctrine of equivalents.

Korea's three trade-secret elements, the unfair-competition claim types under article 2(1), and the 2024 amendment that raised punitive damages from three to five times — all in one practitioner's guide.

Korean patent prosecution runs through five stages — filing, publication, examination request, substantive review, and registration. A practitioner's guide to deadlines, fees, expedited options, and reductions.

A partial design protects a key portion of an article, not the whole. We map the Korean Design Protection Act drawing rules (solid + broken lines), naming conventions, Hague filings, and KR/US/JP differences.

Article 52 of the Korean Patent Act sets three windows for divisional filings. We cover the timing, the unity requirement, and four practical filing strategies.

A practitioner's guide to Korean trademark invalidation and cancellation: who can file, on what grounds, the procedure, and how each decision affects existing rights.

The 2021 amendment brought screen designs themselves into the scope of Korean design protection. We cover registration formats, animated GUI drawings, Hague filings, and how design rights compare to patent and copyright.

App and platform patents are tricky because algorithms are inherently functional. We compare functional and structural claims under KIPO and US §112(f) means-plus-function rules.

Who counts as the trademark user in OEM export — applicant or contract manufacturer? Korean and Chinese precedents diverge sharply. We map cancellation, infringement, and contract checks.

A practitioner's checklist for assigning Korean patents and trademarks — contract terms, transfer registration procedure, when the transfer takes effect, and how consideration is taxed.

How to lock in a Korean filing date with PPT, PDF, or research notes only: the 14-month completion deadline, traps, and how it differs from US provisional applications.

A cosmetic is rarely protected by one right alone. We map KIPO formulation patents, design registrations, trade dress, and MFDS functional cosmetic review into one strategy.

Unlike design rights, a 3D trademark can be protected indefinitely with renewals. We cover Korean Trademark Act Article 33 distinctiveness, acquired distinctiveness, and the Coca-Cola bottle case.

In Korea, a trademark dispute can be brought under the Trademark Act, the Unfair Competition Prevention Act, or both. We map proof burdens, damages, criminal exposure, and stacking strategy.

Medical-device IP is uniquely entangled with regulatory clearance. We map Korean MFDS device grades against KIPO patents, FDA 510(k)/PMA pathways, and a synchronized filing strategy.

How to leverage a Korean base application to file a Madrid Protocol international trademark across 132 territories — and the five-year dependency risk to plan for.

What to do when KIPO issues a Patent-Act Article 63 office action — types of rejection, amendment vs. argument, deadline management, and the final-OA path.