The Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) announced a proposed revision to the "Rules for the Collection of Patent Fees, etc.," including the reduction of patent registration/maintenance fees, on May 1, 2023. Salient features of the proposed revision are highlighted below.

▶Reduction of Patent Registration/Maintenance Fees

While the KIPO has been offering patent fee reduction benefits amounting to 100 billion KRW a year to individuals, SMEs, and other smaller entities under the current law, fairness issues have been raised due to the imbalance in the burden of patent fees borne by benefiting entities and non-beneficiaries (such as large corporations, foreign companies). Moreover, considering that the registration fees/annuities constitute the largest proportion (69.6%) of the KIPO’s total fee revenue, KIPO has been under pressure to ease the patentees’ financial burden in securing patent rights by reducing the patent registration/annuity fees.

According to the proposal, the patent registration fees and annuities will be uniformly reduced by 10% through the entire term of a patent. The revised rules, if adopted, will be applicable to the payment of registration fees and annuities after the effective date of the revision, probably August 1, 2023.

▶Increase of Patent Examination Fees

On the other hand, the filing fees and examination fees for patents, utility models, designs and trademarks in Korea are markedly low compared to other major countries, such as the United States, Japan, China and Europe. The KIPO’s cost analysis of the fee structure estimates a deficit in examination fees of 78.8 billion KRW per year.

To offset at least part of such deficit, the basic examination fee is proposed to be increased from 143,000 KRW (USD 119.20) to 166,000 KRW (USD 138.30) per application, and the additional fee per each claim to be raised from 44,000 KRW (USD 36.70) to 51,000 KRW (USD 42.50).

Unlike the increase in the examination fee, the filing fees will remain unchanged in view of the low proportion it occupies in the overall fee revenue (4%) and to obviate any negative impact it may have on the number of filings.

▶Adjustment of Trademark Fees and Number of Designated Goods

Under the current law, at the stages of filing a trademark application, lodging an appeal and paying the trademark registration fees, it is possible to designate up to 20 items per class for a basic fee, after which additional fees are imposed per each designated good that exceeds 20 items per class. However, the number of unused goods being designated within the 20 item limit has been problematic, hampering efficiency during the examination process and potentially depriving others of the opportunity to obtain trademark rights for goods actually being used. Hence, there has been voiced a need to adjust the number of designated goods per class.

In accordance with the proposed revision, in order to prevent the designation of unused goods, the number of designated goods per class, covered by the basic fee, will be reduced to 10 items, and an additional fee of 2,000 KRW will be imposed on each item exceeding 10 items. To counter-balance the reduction of the number of designated items covered by the basic fee, trademark filing fees and registration fees each will be lowered by 10,000 KRW per application.

▶Introduction of Additional Fees for Divisional Applications

Under the current law, fees for filing a divisional application are the same regardless of the number of divisions filed. Increasingly, however, divisional applications are being utilized to keep patent applications alive for strategic purposes, and consequently, over the past 5 years, the proportion of divisional applications relative to the total number of patent applications has been increasing.

To deter rampant, repetitive filing of divisional applications and thereby lighten the KIPO’s examination load and minimize delays in prosecution, the proposed revision introduces a progressive fee structure for filing a divisional application, as follows.

 * Currently, the fee for filing a new patent application is 46,000 KRW (USD 38.30).