Patent Office Advances Online Patent Trial System

[Asia Economy (Daejeon) Reporter Jeong Il-woong] The Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) is advancing the online patent trial system.

KIPO announced on the 7th that it will promote the 'Digital Patent Trial System Construction Project' from next year until 2025.

The project is being promoted to upgrade the trial system developed in 2002 to meet the latest IT environment and user expectations.

First, through this project, KIPO will support making it easier to prepare trial documents and submit evidence.

When preparing trial documents, the system will be linked with KIPO's database so that existing information is automatically entered, and it will allow pre-checking for any deficiencies in the documents.

Video evidence, which could not be submitted online until now, will be allowed to be submitted online, and the function for attaching supporting documents will also be improved.

In particular, large-volume documents that were sent by mail will be deliverable online, and the period for receiving documents through the electronic application system 'KIPOnara' will be improved from 4 days to continuous reception.

Additionally, the online case inquiry function will be improved so that even if the notification storage period (90 days) has passed or the documents were delivered by mail, users can check the documents on KIPOnara without separately applying to view them.

By applying artificial intelligence (AI) technology, automation of the 'trial formality review' that checks for formal defects in trial documents will also be promoted.

The trial formality review is a task that checks for formal defects in about 130 types of trial documents. Since the types (images) of submitted attachments are diverse, it has relied on visual inspection by formality examiners.

To improve this, KIPO plans to apply AI and OCR technologies to automatically recognize and extract information necessary for formality examination from attachment images, thereby automating the formality review.

Kim Ki-beom, Director of the Information Customer Support Bureau at KIPO, said, "We will ensure that the online patent trial system, which took its first step 20 years ago, responds to the digital transformation era and is reborn as an intelligent patent trial platform."