Riding the Wave of Growing Health Food Demand, 503 Cases of Intellectual Property False Labeling Detected

Products falsely labeled with intellectual property rights and sold on the market have been mass detected, riding on the increasing demand for health functional foods. The domestic market size of health functional foods is estimated to have increased by about 25%, from 4.8 trillion KRW in 2019 to over 6 trillion KRW last year (Korea Health Supplements Association).

On the 27th, the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) announced that it conducted a focused crackdown on false labeling of intellectual property rights across the health functional food sector from August to September and detected a total of 503 violation cases.

Provided by the Korean Intellectual Property Office

The focused crackdown targeted health functional foods, health supplements, and other processed products sold on major open markets such as 11st, Coupang, and Naver.

The types of false labeling detected in the crackdown include ▲ cases where expired rights were labeled as valid rights (430 cases) ▲ simple misprints of patent numbers (32 cases) ▲ labeling of rights that were rejected for registration (19 cases) ▲ labeling of patent rights under application as if registered (7 cases) ▲ and other errors such as incorrect intellectual property rights names (15 cases).

The types of products detected include red ginseng products with 115 cases, followed by probiotic-related products with 74 cases, Baeksuo products with 57 cases, lecithin products with 53 cases, and beta-glucan products with 46 cases.

KIPO cooperated with open market operators to notify sellers of products with false intellectual property labeling and completed corrective actions such as modifying or deleting the sales postings of the relevant products.

Jung In-sik, Director of the Industrial Property Protection Cooperation Bureau at KIPO, said, “Health functional foods are items related to public safety. KIPO expanded the investigation beyond just health functional foods to cover health foods in general to protect consumers. We will continue to strengthen inspections on items related to public safety and those frequently subject to false labeling.”