Key points of the revision of the Implementing Rules of the Korean Patent Act

South Korea will officially implement the new version of the Patent Law on November 1, 2024, mainly involving:

• The procedure for adding inventors/correcting inventors is more stringent. The revised Implementing Rules of the Patent Law stipulate that from the patent authorization date to the issuance of the patent certificate, KIPO will not allow the addition or correction of inventors, and only allows changes in names, misspellings or addresses, etc.
• If you request to add or correct the inventor before the patent certificate is issued, you must provide a declaration document signed by the patent owner and all inventors before the change.
• The application must state the nationality and address of the inventor.
• If a divisional application requests a change in the examination order, the original "examination order is based on the filing date of the parent case" will be changed to "examination order is determined by the Director of the Patent Office", and it will be regulated in accordance with the examination principles for invention patents and utility model patents. KIPO is also actively revising its administrative rules, hoping to change the examination order to the filing date of the divisional application as the examination order, and hopes to officially implement it on January 1, 2025.
• A third party may submit a third party public opinion during the KIPO examination, such as submitting prior art literature and/or a brief description of the technical and legal issues to help the examiner understand. Under the Korean Patent Law before the amendment, third parties were required to disclose their identities in the submission, so third parties often used straw men to keep their identities confidential when submitting public opinions. The revised rules remove the requirement that third parties must disclose their identities, and any third party may submit third party public opinions anonymously.