The Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO, Commissioner Ho-won Kim) has analyzed the quality and usage of patents from government R&D projects from the last five years (2007–2011) and presented the findings in “An Analysis of the 2012 Government R&D Projects’ Patent Performance and Measures to Raise It”.
The final version of the analysis complete with measures to enhance patent performance was confirmed after fine-tuning with other government ministries at the 21st Steering Committee of the National Science and Technology Commission on November 20 (Tuesday).
According to KIPO, patent applications created from government R&D projects amounted to 13,691 in 2007 and 18,983 in 2011, recording a steady annual growth of 8.5%. The number of contracts for technology transfer, including government R&D patented technologies, and profit from those transfers increased each year by 11.0% and 13.9%, respectively.
Among institutions carrying out government R&Ds, universities played the largest role. Of all government R&D patents, universities held a higher share of patents and patent applications vis-à-vis R&D investment than public research institutes and companies. In terms of quality, the technological originality of the patents and protection of the patent rights of universities were relatively more outstanding. The usage of the patents has also been rapidly rising recently.
An examination of the basic, application, and development research stages of R&D shows that the acquisition of patents created at the basic research stage was the most outstanding. The basic research stage is the fastest growing, quantitatively, with the most technological originality and patent rights protection.
KIPO collaborated with related ministries to devise various measures to enhance the competitiveness of government R&D patents.
First, KIPO plans to discover promising technologies and link them as government R&D projects. It will also introduce a stable budget for conducting patented technology trend analyses to raise the efficiency of government R&D.
Second, KIPO will encourage the creation of excellent patents by supporting government R&D strategies based on intellectual property rights at the execution stage. It also plans to promote technology transfer through the systematic discovery and commercialization of promising patented technologies held by universities and public research institutes.
Third, KIPO plans to provide information on government R&D patent performance to all R&D institutions on a regular basis so that they can manage their performances more effectively.
It will also improve the system of collecting patent performance data to prevent omissions and/or the reporting of errors.
Deputy Commissioner Young-min Kim of KIPO said, “We will support the R&D tasks of government ministries by providing them with promising technologies during the stage of discovering new R&D tasks. Furthermore, to improve the overall performance of R&D patents, we will expand our patented technology trend analysis and also support the strategies of government ministries. Thus, our R&D patent performance will reach that of advanced countries.”
