Lee International

Effective January 1, 2025, the Intellectual Property Trial and Appeal Board (IPTAB) has implemented measures to streamline patent and design cases under appeal for a final rejection, aiming to prevent delays in registration.  Under this change, cases will be remanded to examiners only if further examination is required due to unresolved issues or newly discovered grounds for rejection.  Otherwise, trial judges can directly issue a notice of allowance through an appeal decision.  This revision is expected to expedite patent or design registrations by one to two months.

Concurrently, starting January 1, 2025, the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) has revised its examination procedures for divisional applications to further reduce the examination pendency for applications eligible for the Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH).  Specifically, examination of divisional applications will now be prioritized based on their own examination request date rather than that of the parent application.  As a result, while the examination pendency for PPH-eligible applications will be further reduced, the examination pendency for divisional applications is expected to be moderately extended compared to the prior approach.