Forum explores investment, financing and regulatory reform to energize IP monetization market
South Korea's Intellectual Property Office is taking its first steps toward an era in which intellectual property generates real economic returns.
The office held a policy forum Tuesday at the Grand InterContinental Seoul Parnas in Gangnam-gu, Seoul, bringing together nine IP monetization firms — including ID Co. — along with the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute and Yonsei University's Technology Holdings to discuss ways to activate the domestic IP monetization market.
Despite maintaining the world's fourth-highest patent output for many years, South Korea sees a large share of its high-quality patents go unused, with few making their way into trading, licensing or investment deals. Overseas, by contrast, markets built around acquiring and deploying patents through litigation and licensing have been growing rapidly.
In response, the Intellectual Property Office is working to establish the groundwork for treating patents not merely as rights to be held, but as economic assets to be leveraged. The office is focusing its efforts on building a private-sector-led IP monetization ecosystem that connects promising patent discovery and utilization through to investment and returns.
The forum gave industry participants a chance to raise concerns and hear the office's policy direction on four topics: expanding financial and investment support for IP monetization, identifying promising patents and linking them to monetization opportunities, developing and utilizing standard-essential patents, and improving related regulations and institutional frameworks.
"The IP monetization market requires no manufacturing facilities and can generate high added value with relatively modest investment — making it a vast market where we can maximize the strengths of our patent assets," said Kim Yong-seon, commissioner of the Intellectual Property Office. "We will work to energize the IP monetization market so that patents with real potential translate into revenue and enhanced industrial competitiveness."
kwonhl@heraldcorp.com
