KIPO Opens Public Recruitment for Specialized Term Patent Examiners
Patents as Weapons in Semiconductor Tech Hegemony War... Government's Passive Support
Korea's Patent Examinations per Examiner Triple Major Countries... Patent Invalidity Rate Nears 60%
[Asia Economy Reporter Han Yeju] Although the government has decided to publicly recruit specialized term patent examiners to protect domestic advanced industry technologies, concerns are being raised about the effectiveness due to the drastically insufficient number of personnel. The Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) recommended increasing the number of examiners by at least 200 to enhance the patent examination competitiveness in advanced industries such as semiconductors, but this was drastically reduced to 30 due to the “small government” policy. Experts and industry insiders point out that as the global technology hegemony war intensifies, establishing a patent examination environment that meets international standards is essential to gain an advantage in the patent competition.
According to government ministries and industry sources on the 17th, KIPO will accept applications for specialized term patent examiners from July 1 to 7 to provide national-level support for the semiconductor sector. The total number of recruits is 30. The fields are subdivided as follows: ▲ Semiconductor design and materials (4) ▲ Lithography and deposition (6) ▲ Etching, cleaning, and substrate (6) ▲ Assembly, inspection, and packaging (4) ▲ Materials (6) ▲ Display specialized technology (4). Applicants must have experience and degrees related to semiconductor technology. KIPO plans to announce the final successful candidates in February next year after document screening and interviews.
KIPO has strengthened personnel for protecting advanced technology patents as a practical measure to realize President Yoon Seok-yeol’s core national agenda of securing a “semiconductor super-gap.” To this end, it plans to utilize retired personnel from the semiconductor private sector to prevent overseas technology leakage and leverage their expertise in patent examination. This approach is explained as a way to prevent personnel outflow and technology leakage by hiring specialized personnel, following recent trends of overseas companies recruiting retired personnel to extract technology. Furthermore, by focusing examination capabilities on semiconductors, which have emerged as the world’s largest technology battleground, the patent examination period, which previously took over a year, is expected to be significantly shortened. This personnel increase request is considered a relatively low-cost measure by temporarily utilizing retired private-sector semiconductor personnel as examiners.
However, the industry’s dominant reaction is disappointment over the significantly reduced recruitment scale compared to the original plan. Given that the number of domestic patent examiners is very low compared to major countries and that the number of cases per examiner is the highest, the effectiveness is expected to be greatly diminished.
Initially, internally, KIPO estimated that to raise patent examination competitiveness to the level of major competitors such as the U.S., China, Europe, and Japan, more than 1,200 personnel, including those in the semiconductor field, should be added over five years. However, in line with the public sector personnel reduction policy, only 200 semiconductor personnel were initially requested, of which 67 were approved, and after negotiations with the Ministry of Economy and Finance, this was halved again to 30.
In fact, the workload of domestic patent examiners is more than three times that of major competitors such as the U.S., China, Europe, and Japan. The number of cases handled per examiner is the highest at 197, and the technical scope (International Patent Classification, IPC) each examiner must cover is also the widest at 80. The time spent per case is 11 hours, the shortest among them. Compared to Europe’s 34.5 hours, the U.S.’s 29 hours, China’s 22 hours, and Japan’s 16.7 hours, this represents an excessive workload.
The quality of examination is declining, leading to a higher patent invalidation rate. According to KIPO, the semiconductor patent invalidation rate over the past 10 years (2012?2021) reached 56.9%. This means that about 5 out of 10 semiconductor patent examinations filed domestically become invalid after filing. This figure is 8.3 percentage points higher than the overall patent invalidation rate (48.6%), indicating that semiconductor patent examinations are conducted inadequately. Compared to last year’s patent invalidation rates of 24.3% in Japan and 25.3% in the U.S., Korea’s rate is relatively high. This raises concerns that Korea will inevitably fall behind in the technology hegemony race to secure core patents.
Experts argue that as global semiconductor companies fiercely compete to develop next-generation technologies such as 3-nanometer (nm, one-billionth of a meter) semiconductors, the number of examiners must be increased urgently to meet the need for rapid patent acquisition. An anonymous semiconductor expert from KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology) said, “While reducing the number of government officials is necessary, the government needs to take a more proactive approach to patent examination personnel to achieve the critical national agenda of becoming a semiconductor superpower,” adding, “To improve patent quality, which is a key weapon in the technology hegemony competition, a patent environment that aligns with international standards must be established with a long-term perspective.”
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