The procedures for confirming rights and relationships are becoming stricter in terms of protecting the rights of inventors.
On the 31st, the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) announced that the partial amendment to the Enforcement Rules of the Patent Act and Utility Model Act will take effect from the 1st of next month. This amendment is based on ▲ improvements to the inventor correction system to record the true inventor ▲ recording accurate inventor identification information (nationality, country of residence, etc.) ▲ delegation of administrative rules regarding the examination priority of divisional applications.
According to the amendment to the enforcement rules, it will be prohibited to add a person without inventive ability as an inventor after the examination process is completed.
The timing for inventor correction, which previously allowed corrections at any time to record the true inventor, will now have some restrictions, and the submission of supporting documents, which was only required after registration, will be allowed during the examiner’s examination process.
Reflecting this, from now on, patent applicants will generally not be able to add inventors from the time of patent decision until before registration. However, exceptions are made for cases where the identity of the inventor is maintained, such as name changes, simple typos, or address changes. Corrections to inventors are possible from the patent application stage to the patent decision stage and even after registration.
When an inventor correction is required during the examiner’s examination process, an explanatory statement detailing the reason for the correction and confirmation documents signed or sealed by the patent applicant and the inventor subject to correction must be submitted.
It will also be mandatory to record inventor identification information in the patent application. Following the enactment and enforcement of the “Act on the Management and Promotion of Utilization of Industrial Property Information” from August this year, the nationality and country of residence (the country recorded in the address field) of the inventor must be recorded in the patent application to accurately manage inventor information.
Both nationality and country of residence must be recorded using two-letter country codes in English, and no supporting documents such as nationality certificates will be required to verify the inventor’s nationality.
KIPO also included in the amendment the delegation of the examination priority rules for divisional applications to administrative rules (Regulations on Handling Patent and Utility Model Examination Affairs) to flexibly respond to changes in the examination environment. This will apply to applications that have already been assigned examination priority as of the 1st of next month.
Furthermore, aiming for enforcement on January 1st next year, KIPO plans to revise administrative regulations so that the examination of divisional applications will be based on the order of examination requests for the divisional applications themselves, rather than the order of examination requests for the original applications.
In addition, KIPO improved operational shortcomings of the current system through the amendment of the enforcement rules, such as reducing the number of copies of correction documents submitted during procedural corrections after international applications from three to one.
Shin Sang-gon, Director of the Patent Examination Planning Bureau at KIPO, said, “The foundation of the Patent Act is to protect the rights of inventors,” and added, “We hope that this amendment to the enforcement rules will contribute to clearly establishing rights relationships by ensuring that the true inventor is recorded from the patent application stage.”
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