Date: October 28, 2005
Source: KIPO
KIPO commences Korean-English Translation Service
for Domestic Patent Papers from November
The Korean Intellectual Property Office (Commissioner: Kim Jong-Kap) announced that it would start operating the Korean Patent Information Online Network (K-PION) to provide service to translate domestic patent literature written in Korean into English for examiners of foreign IP Offices starting from November this year.
Foreign IP examiners are mandated to refer to Korea's patent records and other information when examining an international patent application, but have found it to be a stumbling block to comprehend the Korean Language in which they are written. The K-PION is supposed to sort out a considerable portion of the trouble and thus help protect and strengthen the position of the domestic patent rights on the international level.
The intellectual property offices of the world entered on the agreement in 1997 to detail the mutual acknowledgement procedures for examination results. In addition, the position of the domestic patent technologies have recently been elevated, especially in the fields of semiconductors, mobile phones, etc. These factors have called for the necessity to protect the international interests of the domestic patent rights, and are the reason in the background to launch the aforementioned service, according to KIPO.
KIPO concluded with the Electronic Telecommunications Research Institute a service agreement in May 2004 to develop the K-PION service and provided ETRI with various patent data necessary in the process. ETRI has been working on the development project for the automatic Korean-English translation system exclusively with regard to the patent information for the past two years. The Ministry of Information and Communication provided ETRI with the financial support from the Information Promotion Fund for the project.