The World's 7th Country with 2 Mil. Patents
On Sept. 19, South Korean President Moon Jae-in awarded the two-millionth patent certificate and the one-millionth design registration certificate in South Korea to Orum Therapeutics CEO Lee Seung-ju and HHS CEO Han Hyung-sup, respectively.
That day, South Korea became the seventh country in the world with two million registered patents behind the United States, France, Britain, Germany, Japan and China. The first and one-millionth patents in South Korea were registered in 1948 and 2010, respectively.
At present, South Korea ranks fourth in the world in the number of patent applications and No. 1 in terms of the number of patents per capita. In addition, it is regarded as one of the world’s top five intellectual property developers with the United States, China, the European Union and Japan.
Experts point out that intellectual properties can be a perfect tool for South Korea’s innovative economic growth in the era of Industry 4.0. “In this regard, the focus of South Korea’s intellectual property paradigms needs to be shifted from quantitative growth to qualitative growth,” one of them pointed out.
On June 19 last year, in the meantime, U.S. President Donald Trump put his own signature on the 10-millionth patent certificate in the United States, reconfirming the importance of intellectual properties in its national administration.