SOURCE: MAEIL BUSINESS NEWSPAPER
DATE: AUG.9, 2010

South Korea’s anti-trust regulators are opening an investigation into whether multinational and domestic companies have wielded their power in relation to their patent rights.

An official at Korea’s Fair Trade Commission (FTC) said on August 9, “The commission launched the probe on August 6 to find any violation regarding patent rights by large IT companies.”

The investigation, first of such, followed a decision that not a few small and medium companies are suffering from the abuse of patent rights at a time when cooperation between large and small companies is emphasized.

A total of 59 companies - 19 multinationals and 40 domestic companies - are subject to the investigation that will focus on a forced sale of unrelated products in return for the use of patent rights, groundless patent litigation aimed at blocking competition and excessive royalty demand among other things.

The probe will last September 30. In 2009, the Commission imposed a penalty of 273.2 billion won ($235.3 million) against Qualcomm as the mobile phone chip maker charged a high royalty when Korean CDMA manufacturers used technologies by rivals.