Reasonable Protection of Intellectual Property
(Daegu Daily Newspaper on October 3,2022 )
Myung Shin Kim
Advisor,The Presidential Council on
Intellectual Property
A bill stating that in case where a party has appointed an
attorney at law as an agent for a patent infringement lawsuit, if the party
wants, they may appoint a patent attorney as an additional agent, was passed
through the Industry, Trade, Resource, Medium & Small
Venture Enterprise Committee of the National Assembly in May 2022.
The bill is now pending at the Legislation and Judiciary Committee (LJC). This
amendment bill of Patent Attorney Law (PAL) is the third try in the National
Assembly. According to this bill, a patent attorney must attend the court
together with an attorney at law.
Now, let us think about the function and power of the LJC.
According to the National Assembly Law (NAL), the LJC can only
examine whether a bill accords with the legal system or has
improper wording. Nevertheless, taking this opportunity, the LJC adjourned the
session without examining the bill, which is against the
attorneys at law's interest.
As such, in September 2021, the National Assembly newly
stipulated Article 86.Para.5 of NAL. This Article says that the LJC
should not examine beyond whether a bill accords with the legal system or
if there is any improper wording. Further, Article 32-4 and 32-5 of NAL says
that in case a member of the National
Assembly has a business conflict with a bill, such member must
apply the evasion for the bill to the chairperson of a Committee.
According to this Article, the attorneys at
law of the LJC must evade the examination for the revision bill of PAL on
the qualification issue of a patent attorney as an agent for the patent
infringement lawsuit.
Regarding this bill, the Korean Federation of Science and
Technology Societies, the National Academy of Engineering of Korea, the
Korean Certified Technicians Association, the Korea Venture Enterprises
Association, and almost all companies involved with
patent infringement lawsuits, eagerly wish it to pass through the National Assembly.
The U.K., the European Union (27 countries), Japan, and China have
already empowered patent attorneys to act as an agent for
patent infringement cases. In 2002, Japan, which is more conservative
than Korea in its judicial system, accepted the request from the
industrial world and empowered patent attorneys to act as an agent for
patent infringement lawsuits, together with attorneys at
law. Thus, it is reported that the litigation periods, in comparison with those
represented only by attorneys at
law, in general, were shortened by about ten months. Until
now, large law firms in which attorneys at law and patent
attorneys work together have handled most patent infringement lawsuits.
Therefore, the litigation costs were very expensive. However, if the revised
bill of PAL passes through the National
Assembly, the litigation costs will be cheaper because medium and
small law firms will have an opportunity to work.
In June 2022, the International Management Development Institute
in Switzerland announced the evaluation report on I.P.Policy
Execution among sixty-four countries worldwide. In this report, Korea
ranked thirty-seventh in the execution of the I.P. Policy, even
though Korea is second in the ratio in the investment
for research to Gross National Products and fourth in number of
patent applications.
As an example, in 1997 Saehan Information System
Co., Ltd., in Korea, obtained a patent for an MP3 Player for the first time in
the world. Unfortunately, this patent right was transferred to an American
company due to a management shortage. If this patent right had been
owned by a Korean company, the territory of music download stores in the
world would have changed a great deal. This shows that the role of a
patent attorney is very important.
When Samsung and Apple proceeded with worldwide litigation regarding
cellular phone patents, betting life and death of the two companies, the
attorneys at law and patent attorneys worked together on the legal and
technical issues.
Additionally, it took eleven years and eight months for the
patentee of the diaper patent to receive the final judgment from the Supreme
Court because we have dual court systems for invalidation trials and
infringement suits, and the attorneys at
law and judges did not understand the technical issues well.
Finally, patent infringement cases were concentrated in several
District Courts and the Patent Court as the second instance court after
amending the Court Organization Law.
The I.P. itself is the national competitiveness power under the
4th industrial property revolution era. Therefore, the issue of an agent's
qualification as a patent attorney for patent infringement suits is not a
simple business conflict between the attorneys at
law and patent attorneys. Considering that advanced technology has now become a
worldwide security issue, I hope that the LJC and National
Assembly will pass the bill for amending PAL at this time
in order to actively manage the national interest and
realize a fair society in the severe international patent war.
//echo $view[rich_content]; // {이미지:0} 과 같은 코드를 사용할 경우?>