The Korea Herald is publishing a series of interviews on experts in the intellectual property sector. This is the twelfth installment. -- Ed.

Having kicked off 20 years ago as Asia’s first court specializing in intellectual property issues, South Korea’s Patent Court is now aspiring to rise as a regional hub for multinational patent litigations, according to its recently appointed chief.

“South Korea is noted for its unrivalled speed and procedural efficiency in resolving (IP-related) disputes,” Cho Kyeong-ran, chief judge of the Patent Court, told The Korea Herald in an interview.

“Such agility is a tangible forte considering the growing number of multi-jurisdiction patent suits across the globe and the escalating complexity of technology.”

The average period which the Korean IP court spent per case stood at 148.8 days in 2016, according to court data. Though this was some 50 days longer than the average in general courts, the figure was still visibly shorter than the average in most of the key advanced countries.

Cho took office as the Patent Court’s 19th chief justice in February, facing ahead a critical year as the court celebrates its 20th anniversary and gears up for the kickoff of an international trial department.

Under the revised Court Organization Act, approved by the National Assembly in December last year, parties in a patent suit may apply for an English procedure at the Patent Court’s international justice department, starting June 13.

A task force is currently in action to set up related regulations at the Supreme Court and to initiate an interpreting and translation center at the Patent Court by the end of May, according to officials.

In a preparatory step, the court also held a mock trial session in June last year to check on the involvement of the industrial world and to review the court’s linguistic and procedural capacities.

“It was through the mock trial and the consequent feedback that we detected the possibility of reverse discrimination against domestic participants, that is why we expanded the option of the use of the Korean language for those who find it more convenient,” Cho said.

Judges and Korean nationals may freely choose to speak or to submit documents in Korean, in which case foreign participants will be provided with real-time interpretation and translated documents afterwards -- all free of charge.

The judicial system change came in response to the recently escalating number of multinational patent suits here. Of the 582 cases filed at the Patent Court last year, one third involved a foreign individual or company, court data showed.

Backing the court’s effort was a report by the Korea Law & Economics Association which predicted a direct economic effect of 1.15 trillion won ($1 billion) following the introduction of the international department.

“We do realize that more is to be done in order to fundamentally improve our court system and to attract multinational litigations here,” the court chief also said.

“The idea is to better protect the rights of patent holders and to facilitate the legal procedures, and the English trial system is one of the many ways to achieve such a goal.“

For instance, a revision bill of the Patent Act has been submitted and is currently pending at the National Assembly to lift the compensation ceiling up to three times the actual amount of damage, the chief justice explained.

“During the past two decades, our patent judicial system has made visible progresses not only in size, but also in the quality of its rulings,“ Cho said.

“Our goal now is to gain a competitive edge over other foreign courts and thus be considered as a priority jurisdiction in multinational patent litigations.”

By Bae Hyun-jung 
(tellme@heraldcorp.com)