AI and Bio New Industry Patents 'Swiftly'... Industrial Competitiveness 'Firmly'

Example materials of 'Patent Grant Criteria' to be applied in the digital new industry sector. Provided by the Korean Intellectual Property Office

[Asia Economy (Daejeon) Reporter Jeong Il-woong] The Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) is accelerating patent applications and acquisitions in the digital new industry sector to enhance domestic industrial competitiveness.

On the 18th, KIPO announced that it has established the "Patent Granting Standards for the Digital New Industry Sector" and will apply them during the examination process.

The patent granting standards focus on helping companies secure high-quality patents in five core fields?artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, bio, and others?enabling them to prepare for future growth engines both domestically and internationally.

For example, in the artificial intelligence field, the patent granting standards provide guidelines and specific judgment cases related to specification drafting (patent acquisition), which has been a challenge for companies due to the characteristics of the new industry.

In the Internet of Things service sector, the standards have been revised to encourage market entry by companies and to move away from the unreasonable application of existing manufacturing-based patent granting standards to ICT convergence technologies, considering the characteristics and effects of inventions by service sector.

In the seed industry sector, for seeds improved using CRISPR gene-editing technology, the patent granting standards have been relaxed to allow protection if new effects are achieved by applying to different crops, and guidelines and exemplary cases for specification description for applicants are provided.

In the bio sector, the previously unclear patent granting standards for AI-based new drug development have been supplemented to support companies in establishing optimal patent application strategies at each development stage of drug repositioning technology using artificial intelligence.

The patent granting standards were developed as an extension of the government's digital New Deal promotion direction and KIPO's ongoing efforts to establish "customized examination policies considering industrial characteristics."

Most importantly, the standards were prepared through continuous exchanges of opinions with an industry intellectual property consultative body mainly composed of companies with multiple patent applications, and through verification processes by external experts such as the Korean Patent Attorneys Association and the Korea Intellectual Property Association, which adds significance.

This year, besides the five core new industry sectors, KIPO plans to identify additional digital new industry sectors with high growth potential, such as autonomous driving, intelligent robots, and cosmetics, and establish customized patent granting standards so that companies can quickly acquire related patents and enhance industrial competitiveness.

Park Jong-joo, Director of the Patent Examination Planning Bureau at KIPO, said, "The patent granting standards for the digital new industry sector are considered a core achievement of KIPO's 'industry-specific customized examination policies' efforts. Based on this, KIPO will spare no support to ensure that Korea's advanced and digital technologies can lead the market and ultimately strengthen national industrial competitiveness."