New legislative proposals to counter
Intellectual Property infringement damages
“48% of companies, 81% of consumers unable to take action against unfair competition.
An estimated amount of 44 trillion won is related to 390,000 damage cases over the past 5 years."[1]
"Member of the National Assembly Lee So-Young proposed the amendment to the Design Protection Act and Utility Model Act
to promote investigation by the official authority without accusation upon a crime of infringement of intellectual property rights”[2]
According to a recent survey on unfair competition conducted by the Korean Intellectual Property Office to KDN Research among 1,250 businesses nationwide and 1,000 consumers from the age of 20, 12.6% of companies experienced direct damage from unfair competition or witnessed unfair competition, in which 86.2% of unfair competition behavior experienced by the affected companies in the production and sale of imitation products.
If the damage experience and scale by 1,250 companies are expanded to all businesses nationwide (4,176,549 companies based on 2019 survey of Statistics Korea), the Korean Intellectual Property Office estimated that the damage caused by unfair competition was 390,000 cases and companies have suffered the damages equivalent to 44 trillion won over the past five years. Despite the enormous damage caused by unfair competition activities, 47.7% of companies and 81.4% of consumers were found to be unable to take proper legal action against their damage by unfair competition. 67,7% of those companies saying that the reason not to take repose against such unfair competition is because of cost and other economic burdens1.
In response to such infringement of intellectual property rights causing by unfair competition, a member of the National Assembly Lee So-Young from the ruling party – Democracy Party of Korea, a member of Trade, Industry, Energy, SMES and Startup Committee, has recently announced on September 03rd that she has proposed a bill to amend the Design Protection Act and Utility Model Act. The amendment includes two main changes:
• Investigation to be allowed and able to conduct without the petition from the infringed intellectual property rights and related rights holders;
• The period of a criminal complaint to be eliminated.2
By eliminating the period of the criminal complaint, the criminal petition can be filed without being restricted by the period of criminal complaint (6 months).
By giving investigators ex officio authority to investigate without a complaint petition from the infringed intellectual property rights and related rights holders, crimes of infringement of intellectual property rights shall be changed from “an offense subject to a complaint” (친고죄) as stated in existing law to “an offense unpunishable over the objection” (반의사불벌죄) meaning that an offense shall be possible to prosecute regardless of the complaint of infringed intellectual property rights and related rights holders and shall be disabled over the explicit objection of such victim.
This move is expected to bring positive results in the goal of protecting businesses and consumers from infringement of intellectual property rights as well as ensuring fair competition in the market.
