REPUBLIC OF KOREA – KR
Jurisdiction - General Information
The Republic of Korea has been a Contracting Party to the Paris Convention since May 4, 1980. It has
also been a Contracting Party to the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) since August 10, 1984. In addition,
it is a party to the Budapest Treaty on the International Recognition of the Deposit of Microorganisms
for the Purposes of Patent Procedure.
More legal information about intellectual property-related laws and regulations of the Republic of Korea
can be found on WIPO Lex.

Online Patent Register and Online Gazette
The Republic of Korea has an Online Register and an Online Gazette.

Features and search functionalities
The Online Register (KIPRIS) has an English and a Korean interface and includes patents and utilitymodels.
Through the Online Register you can retrieve information on PCT National Phase Entry, Fee Payment,
Legal Status, Patent Term Adjustments (an instrument of Patent Term Extension), and access theDossier/File Wrapper Information and the Full Publications.
The Online Register can also be searched by PCT Application/Publication Number, byApplicant/Inventor Name, and by Priority Data.
The Online Gazette is published daily in Korean. The current coverage is from 2016 to present.
The recent months of the gazette can be searched by date from this link or by several criteria from thislink.

Additional Information
Particularities of patent protection in the Republic of Korea
An instrument of Patent Term Extension (Patent Term Adjustment) for pharmaceutical products isavailable.
The normal patent term of protection of 20 years can be adjusted if the registration of a patent isdelayed more than four years from the filing date of the application; or more than three years from thedate of filing a request for examination.
From September 29, 2017, the "application date" of PCT national phase entries is the application date of
the PCT application; prior to that it was the date of submission of the translation.

Search tips
To search the Korean databases for non-Korean language speakers, it is suggested to follow theexplanations in English provided by the European Patent Office.
To search by PCT Application Number use the format PCT/EP2009/000017.
The PCT National Phase Entry date is reported as " Translation submission Date " in the bibliographic
record, in the "Legal Status" or "Administrative" tabs as "Document according to the Article 203 ofPatent Act" or indicated properly (as INID code 85) in the cover page of the publication, e.g. Korean
publication number 10-2010-0111682 resulting from PCT/EP2009/000017.
Fee Payment information is available only for applications with the status "Registered" or "Ended", e.g.,
for application 10-1999-7008046, in the "Registr. Details" or "Administrative" tabs.
An example of Legal Status is "Rejected" for application 10-1998-0704043.
For each record a list of events are reported, however, public access to the Dossier/File Wrapper
Information is possible only through the 'Global Dossier' service integrated in Espacenet (includingmachine translation) for KR-A publications. The Global Dossier covers applications filed since January 1,2000.
To access information about patent term adjustments, please consult the EPO document "Retrieving
patent term extension information from KIPRIS" available at this link.
The Online Gazette database can be searched by several parameters and allows to retrieve patents andutility models publications.