Korea Intellectual Property Office visits Cosmax to discuss cosmetics trade secret protection

The Korea Intellectual Property Office said Thursday it visited cosmetics developer and manufacturer Cosmax to discuss ways to protect the industry's core technologies from leaks, as the country's cosmetics exports reach record levels.

Commissioner Kim Yong-sun toured the company's headquarters and research center in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province, at 3 p.m. on Oct. 29, where the office heard about the company's intellectual property protection efforts and difficulties in the field.

Cosmax, founded in 1992, is an original development manufacturing, or ODM, company in which the manufacturer handles everything from product design to production while the client sells the finished goods under its own brand. It ranked first among domestic ODM companies in cosmetics production last year.

The company has filed more than 2,000 patents, including some 900 registrations, as of September 2026.

Korea's cosmetics exports reached $11.4 billion last year, the highest on record, making the country the world's second-largest cosmetics exporter after France. The office said growing industry prominence has brought rising concern about the leakage of manufacturing techniques and other trade secrets, as well as damage from counterfeit products.

ODM companies are particularly exposed because they share core technical information with many client companies, making trade secret management and leak prevention directly tied to competitiveness. The Korea Intellectual Property Office said it is pursuing legal and institutional improvements to protect corporate technology and trade secrets under the Unfair Competition Prevention and Trade Secret Protection Act, and that its special judicial police are responding actively to patent, trade secret and trademark infringement crimes.

In June, the office established a dedicated technology-leak investigation unit and expanded its technology police by 34 officers to strengthen its response to the overseas leakage of advanced technology.

"Core technologies and trademarks built through long research and development are the competitiveness of the cosmetics industry," said Jeong Yeon-woo, deputy commissioner of the Korea Intellectual Property Office. "We will further strengthen technology leak response and intellectual property protection policies so that our cosmetics companies can thoroughly protect the technologies and intellectual property they have painstakingly developed."