(Seoul = Yonhap News) Reporter Choi Hyun-seok reports that the Presidential Commission on Intellectual Property, in collaboration with the Supreme Court, announced the hosting of the “International Conference on the Current Status of the Unified Patent System in Europe and the Future of Intellectual Property Cooperation in Asia” on the 10th at the Ambassador Pullman Hotel in Jung-gu.
Supreme Court Justice Noh Tae-ak, in his keynote address titled “The Need for a New International Dispute Resolution System for Intellectual Property (IP),” highlighted the necessity for a new system for resolving global patent disputes. He noted issues such as the concentration of global patent litigation in certain courts favorable to patent holders, the extraterritorial application of national laws in standard patent disputes, and the infringement of intellectual property rights on the borderless internet.
During the first session, Klaus Grabinski, President of the Appeal Court of the Unified Patent Court (UPC), delivered a presentation on “The Status and Implications of UPC Litigation.”
According to the European Patent Office (EPO), the distribution of European single patent holdings by country is as follows: EPO member countries hold 62.7%, the United States 15.4%, China 5.7%, Korea 4.1%, and Japan 3.8%. The companies with the most European single patents include Siemens (Germany) with 776, Johnson & Johnson (U.S.) with 738, Samsung (Korea) with 651, Qualcomm (U.S.) with 562, and Volvo (Sweden) with 422.
In the second session, titled “Trends and Strategies for European Single Patents,” Carl Josefsson, President of the Boards of Appeal of the EPO, discussed trends in European patent trials, objections, and invalidation lawsuits. In the third session, Judge Lee Hye-jin of the Patent Court and Professor Park Sung-phil from KAIST’s Graduate School of Future Strategy presented on “The Future and Preparatory Tasks of the Asian Intellectual Property Community.”
The conference was attended by approximately 250 participants, including corporate patent managers, lawyers, and patent attorneys, and was also broadcasted live online.
Lee Kwang-hyung, a civilian commissioner of the Intellectual Property Commission, expressed hope that the conference would serve as a meaningful opportunity to share the experience of the European Unified Patent System and contemplate the direction of intellectual property cooperation in Asia. He further stated that the commission would strive to strengthen intellectual property cooperation in the Asian region in the future.
Cheon Dae-yeop, the chief of the court administration, expressed expectations for in-depth discussions on the future of the Asian Intellectual Property Community and meaningful outcomes from the conference.