Daejeon City Supports Local SMEs in 'Intellectual Property International Disputes'

[Asia Economy (Daejeon) Reporter Jeong Il-woong] Daejeon City will support the prevention and response strategies for international intellectual property disputes of local small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

The city announced on the 4th that it will promote the "2021 International Intellectual Property Dispute Response Strategy Project" with this purpose.

Intellectual property is a comprehensive concept including patents, utility models, trademarks, and designs. The strategic project aims to protect international intellectual property rights for export (planned) items of SMEs.

The city, in collaboration with the Korean Intellectual Property Office, will implement the project with a total budget of 400 million KRW. The core of the project is to allow SMEs to directly select and receive support for situation-specific response strategies such as invalidation analysis, design-around, and counterattack patent review to prevent and respond to patent disputes regarding export (planned) items.

Especially this year, the project scope will include trademarks and designs to review potential disputes that may arise during the overseas localization stage, provide avoidance strategies, and enable responses to unauthorized rights preemption by trademark brokers.

Applications will be accepted through the International Intellectual Property Dispute Information Portal until the 22nd of this month.

After receiving applications, the city will conduct a comprehensive evaluation of project performance and utilization plans to select the final supported companies.

For more details, information can be found on the websites of Daejeon Technopark and the Korea Intellectual Property Protection Agency.

Myung No-chung, Director of the Science and Industry Bureau of the city, said, "As the risk of global intellectual property disputes for overseas-expanding companies increases these days," adding, "the city will support local SMEs to grow into global companies by protecting excellent patented technologies and trademarks."