The Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) is completing and launching a ‘Patent Fast Track’ for the bio sector. The fast track operates with the core goals of supporting high-quality examination through the establishment of a dedicated organization and personnel deployment, and shortening the examination processing period by designating priority examination targets. Through this, patent applicants in the bio sector, such as companies, will be able to receive examination results within two months, which is expected to enhance global competitiveness by securing patent rights quickly.
KIPO announced on the 10th that a dedicated examination organization for the bio sector has been launched. The dedicated examination organization subdivides the existing ‘Bio Healthcare Examination Division’ under the Digital Convergence Examination Bureau into five divisions: ▲Bio-based Examination Division ▲Bio Diagnostic Analysis Examination Team ▲Bio Pharmaceutical Examination Team ▲Healthcare Device Examination Team ▲Healthcare Data Examination Team, and deployed 120 personnel to enable professional examination across all areas of the bio industry ecosystem.
The bio sector is regarded as a national advanced strategic technology and a future core growth engine in Korea. There are also forecasts that the global market size related to bio will approach $3.3 trillion by 2027. However, the bio sector requires enormous costs and time for research and development (R&D), and features that even a small number of excellent patents can enable productization, revenue generation, and long-term market dominance, leading to high demand from companies for rapid examination services to secure preemptive and strategic patent rights.
Reflecting this, patent applications in Korea’s bio sector, including biotechnology and healthcare, have grown at an average annual rate of 8.2% over the past five years, exceeding the overall patent application average annual growth rate of 2.3% by 3.5 times.
To meet the demand for rapid examination services in the bio industry, KIPO hired 35 private bio sector experts as patent examiners last month, designated the bio sector as a priority examination target, and completed the patent fast track for the bio sector by establishing a dedicated examination organization.
In this process, KIPO concentrated 35 newly hired examiners and 85 bio sector examiners who were scattered across existing examination bureaus into the dedicated examination organization to enable more efficient and consistent patent examination. The 120 bio sector examiners pool their examination capabilities to improve examination quality through collaborative examination and other methods.
Above all, by including the bio sector in the priority examination targets and establishing grounds to shorten the examination processing period from the existing 18.9 months to two months, KIPO expects that rapid patent acquisition in the domestic bio industry and strengthening of global competitiveness through this will be possible.
Kim Wanki, Commissioner of KIPO, said, “Based on the completion of the patent fast track, including the establishment of a dedicated organization for the bio sector, we will spare no effort to support domestic companies in laying the foundation to gain an advantage in the global market.”
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