Splash of Litigation
The Korea Federation of Small & Medium Enterprises (SMEs) held the second Electrical & Equipment Industry Committee meeting in the afternoon of Sept. 8 at its headquarters located in Yeouido, Seoul.
Intellectual Discovery participated in the conference to discuss specific ways of cooperation for SMEs’ response to patent disputes. Intellectual Discovery is a public-private patent management firm established by the Korean government.
“These days, patent disputes are becoming more and more prevalent across the world, but not a few Korean SMEs are finding it difficult to cope with them due to the lack of personnel and financial resources,” said Roh Shi-chung, head of the committee, adding, “We are planning to prepare measures for protecting them in the form of, for example, patent pools that are shared by SMEs in the same industries and propose the measures to the government authorities concerned in the near future.”
A patent pool can be defined as an agreement in which patent holders entrust the management of their patents and a firm included in such a patent pool is allowed to make use of the patents of the other members. It contributes to a decrease in the number of patent disputes between companies in the same industry and allows two or more members to respond together with each other in dealing with disputes.