The government is establishing a dedicated semiconductor patent organization, the first of its kind in a major country, and will support our companies' acquisition of cutting-edge technologies through rapid and accurate review.

The Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) (Commissioner Lee In-sil) and the Ministry of the Interior and Safety announced that the revision of the KIPO organization, which includes the establishment of a "Semiconductor Examination Promotion Team (hereinafter referred to as the Promotion Team)" dedicated to examining semiconductor technology, passed the Cabinet meeting on the 4th and will be implemented on the 11th.

Once the task force begins full operation this month, it will be possible to conduct watertight reviews covering all areas of semiconductors, including manufacturing and assembly processes, materials, and equipment, and it is expected that this will allow our companies to establish a tight patent network for the cutting-edge technologies they develop.

Furthermore, the 167 dedicated examiners assigned to the task force are expected to meticulously review the applied technologies and quickly confirm their rights, thereby contributing to our companies maintaining their global super-gap advantage based on advanced technology patents.

In March, the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) hired 30 private semiconductor experts as examiners to prevent technology leaks and provide fast and accurate patent examinations.

On the other hand, existing semiconductor examiners were dispersed across the electrical (components and processes), chemical (materials), and mechanical (equipment) departments, making it difficult to consolidate examination capabilities and create synergy even when new personnel were added.

Furthermore, despite the continuous emergence of cutting-edge process technologies such as 3nm and below, the lack of a specialized semiconductor review organization has limited the ability to systematically protect our companies' core technologies.

Accordingly, the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) has been continuously discussing with the Ministry of the Interior and Safety a plan to establish a dedicated semiconductor examination organization with the aim of concentrating existing examiners and new personnel in one place to shorten the examination processing period through the expansion of semiconductor priority examination and improve the performance of three-person collaborative examination. It has also been reported that the establishment of the task force was conceived with the purpose of actively supporting the Yoon Seok-yeol administration's key national policy tasks, such as "protecting and fostering key national strategic technologies such as semiconductors."

Looking at the main contents of this revision of the organization and organization enforcement regulations, the Patent Examination Bureau will be expanded and reorganized from 5 to 6 bureaus with the establishment of a new promotion team. The task force will be launched with six departments and teams, and to achieve this, three departments under the Telecommunications Review Bureau will be transferred, while three new teams with total personnel expenses that can be installed by reducing the organization's operating costs will be established.

136 people from the Telecommunications Review Bureau (100 people), Chemical and Biological Review Bureau (15 people), and Mechanical and Metal Review Bureau (21 people) will be transferred and reassigned to the Promotion Team, and 30 new expert reviewers will be added, bringing the total to 167 people (1 team leader, and each department and team will be composed of approximately 25 people).

The plan is to create an environment that allows for smooth collaboration, such as three-person collaborative review, by evenly distributing existing and new reviewers in each department at an appropriate ratio, thereby increasing both review efficiency and quality.

The name will be changed to the 'Digital Convergence Review Bureau' to match the functions of the Convergence Technology Review Bureau, which handles cutting-edge technologies such as AI, big data, the Internet of Things, intelligent robots, and autonomous driving, which are the darlings of the digital transformation (DX) era.

In response to the implementation of a digital platform government, the Information Customer Support Bureau will be renamed the "Industrial Property Information Bureau" to facilitate policy demanders' understanding of the organization's role in managing and utilizing vast amounts of industrial property information and data, including patents and trademarks.

Commissioner of the Korean Intellectual Property Office Lee In-sil said, “With the implementation of the semiconductor priority examination in November of last year, the hiring of private sector expert examiners, and the establishment of the Semiconductor Examination Promotion Team, the organizational and personnel restructuring work that has been pursued since taking office to strengthen the competitiveness of the semiconductor industry has been completed.” He added, “We will make even more thorough efforts to operate the organization and personnel so that our semiconductor companies can protect their core technologies in a timely manner without concerns about technology leakage.”

Han Sun-ki, Director of Organization Policy at the Ministry of the Interior and Safety, said, “I hope that the establishment of the Korean Intellectual Property Office’s semiconductor-dedicated examination bureau will lead to tangible results in securing a sustained semiconductor advantage for our companies in the future.”rdquo; he added.