Climate Crisis Response 'Green Technology' Patent Acquisition Accelerates

Rapid patent acquisition for green technologies addressing the climate crisis, such as carbon reduction, will become possible.

On the 23rd, the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) announced that it will apply relaxed priority examination requirements for green technology patent applications.

The relaxation of priority examination requirements aims to support the swift examination and rights acquisition of green technologies and will be applied starting from the 24th of this month.

According to KIPO, previously, to receive priority examination for green technologies, applicants had to meet additional conditions such as being certified as a green specialized company or receiving financial support from the national or local governments.

This was considered an obstacle for researchers and inventors who needed to quickly secure patent rights after developing climate change response technologies.

Reflecting this, the relaxation measure for priority examination requirements for green technologies allows applicants to request priority examination simply by having their patented invention classified under the new patent classification related directly to carbon dioxide capture, assigned by KIPO. No additional evidence or supplementary conditions will be required.

The new patent classification can be checked on the KIPO website (from the 24th). The detailed technical fields include technologies for building and operating carbon dioxide capture and transportation network infrastructure, technologies for processing and permanent sequestration of captured carbon dioxide, and technologies related to biochar production and soil application.

Biochar is a compound word of bio-pas and charcoal, referring to a solid material with high carbon content produced by pyrolysis in an oxygen-free environment. When applied to soil, it can reduce carbon concentration and is considered one of the technologies used to mitigate climate change.

KIPO expects that the relaxation of priority examination requirements for green technologies will reduce the burden of green technology certification and financial support, thereby expanding applicants' utilization. Furthermore, KIPO anticipates that priority examination will enable the rapid rights acquisition of green technologies responding to the climate crisis.

With priority examination, it is possible to obtain patent rights in about two months. Considering that it usually takes around 20 months to acquire patent rights under general examination (based on last year’s data), applicants can receive examination results more than 18 months earlier.

Shin Sang-gon, Director of the Patent Examination Planning Bureau at KIPO, stated, “The relaxation of priority examination requirements for green technologies will enable securing a competitive advantage through rapid rights acquisition and will help further technological innovation. KIPO will contribute to solving national environmental issues by reflecting the international community’s growing interest in carbon neutrality and enabling the swift rights acquisition of related technologies.”