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The Korean Patent Act has been revised twice in the year 2016 and the revisions are quite substantial. Some of the new revisions will become effective from June 30 2016 and others from March 1 2017. The major revisions include the following:

Recently, the Korean Supreme Court made a key decision regarding how to read the prior art when making an inventive step determination (2013 Hu 2873 and 2880 (consolidated), January 14 2016).

Three years ago, Korea adopted a new patent term adjustment (PTA) system. As many readers know, PTA is a system that allows extension of a patent term to the patent owner to compensate for an unreasonable delay during the prosecution phase.

In 2016, Korea has been substantially re-shaping its IP system. One such change is the Trade Mark Act, which has been comprehensively re-drafted. One of the main changes in trade mark is the non-use cancellation of the registered mark. When a registered trade mark has not been used in Korea for three consecutive years, third parties can seek to cancel it on the grounds of non-use. According to the existing Act, only an interested party can request cancellation of a non-used mark. However, under the new system, legal standing is no longer required; therefore, any person may request cancellation of a non-used registered mark. The new system is expected to accelerate the procedure and give more opportunity to those who actually intend to use the mark by remedying weaknesses in the registration system.

Does exporting parts or components of a patented product for final assembly outside the country infringe the patent? Recently, the Korean Supreme Court answered this question for the first time in Korea in its decision 2014Da42110 (July 23 2015).

China has an extensive and generous system of subsidies for patent filers. Xia Zheng and Mengmeng Yu of AFD China Intellectual Property Law Office explain how the system works

Following the Myriad decision in the United States, the High Court of Australia recently denied the patent eligibility of isolated genes of BRCA1 DNA. Along with the Alice decision from the United States, this is truly a new wave. What we patent reflects the most fundamental social decisions in our patent system. It is worth seeing how Korea is riding on this wave and balancing its system.

The use of hyperlinks may be considered as a trade-related copyright infringement under certain circumstances.

On January 1 2016, the IP enforcement system in Korea changed significantly. By amending the Civil Procedure Act and the Court Organisation Act, Korea centralised the jurisdiction of both the first instance and the appellate courts of infringement actions.

To understand the application and scope in our legal system of the exhaustion of rights doctrine it is necessary to know what it means. So, we must understand that the exhaustion of rights is a limitation on IP rights, which results in the loss of these exclusive rights granted to the titleholder over some product covered by an IP right, when such product has been lawfully introduced to the market by him or with his consent.

The EU has set out rules for determining whose law applies to contractual or non-contractual conflicts. Aurélia Marie outlines how they should be applied to cross-border IP disputes