December 20, 2023
KIPO Improved Its IT Systems for Trial and Appeal Sector
Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) has rolled out an improved IT system for its trial and appeal sector on December 18, 2023 as part of its continuous enhancements of customer service and work efficiency.
With the help of new features being made available on the respective electronic systems, anyone wishing to fill and submit a form on-line for a trial or appeal before the Intellectual Property Trial and Appeal Board (IPTAB) and the Board's formality examiners as well will now be able to get their job done faster and easier going forward. This is one of the tangible outcomes of the targeted efforts KIPO has made since this year under its three-year plan for building a highly advanced and efficient IT system that employs artificial intelligence (AI), automation and other new digital technologies, for its examination and trial sectors.
Improved functionality of its public e-filing website
From mid-December, this year, KIPO's e-filing website ("Patent-Ro") will provide improved or new features that will make users' filing or submission experience more concise and error-proof.
Users now can fill in the fields of an electronic trial-related form more easily and more correctly as they can do so by using the autofill and autocomplete function. Some of the key information that must be presented, for example, the assigned number of patent applicant, trial case or documentary evidence, are automatically filled in with saved data, once the typing person verifies himself or herself as a rightful right holder or party to the trial case. Also, the system informs the person of any misspelling or missing of documents before he or she clicks on the submission button. These features in particular will decrease the chance on the trial parties of having to make corrections or amendments later on, eventually simplifying the process. When it comes to the evidentiary documents, KIPO has also made it possible for the trial parties to upload a multi-media file and a file of size no greater than 200MB at a time.
Enhanced efficiency in formality examination
KIPO has also adopted artificial intelligence (AI) to increase work efficiency and productivity on the part of the IPTAB with its work on 'formality examination'. Before the Board decides on the acceptance of a case, its formality examiners carry out a formality scrutiny for all documents submitted by trial parties, to review whether the documents submitted by the parties have met the given requirements and the provided information is presented in a proper format or in a correct manner. The problem is there can be 171 different types of documents an examiner may have to look through, some of which include an image file that requires a manual screening.
The recently introduced AI-powered Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology in this context is highly expected to alleviate the workload of formality examiners by automatically extracting relevant information even from the images attached in the submitted documents and producing automatic check results for human review. Upon a successful operation of such system within the field of trial and appeal, KIPO will consider a wider usage of it in the other area of business, such as for the handling of IP applications and registration.
"KIPO will keep trying to upgrade our IT systems across the board by making the most of cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence to the extent applicable, so as to provide high-quality and easier-to-use services to our users," said Director General for Industrial Property Information Bureau of KIPO LEE Insoo.