Korea Intellectual Property Office awards 32 million won to five teams

The Korea Intellectual Property Office said Monday it awarded a total of 32 million won ($24,164) to five teams at its second special performance awards ceremony, recognizing work on protecting Korean brands and intellectual property abroad.

The largest prize, 10 million won ($7,551), went to the K-brand government certification task force, which built the world's first government-wide response system against counterfeits of Korean brands circulating overseas in a market the office valued at 11 trillion won ($8.31 billion). The team secured 9.5 billion won ($7.17 million) in supplementary budget funding and coordinated seven ministries, including the foreign and justice ministries, the office said. It also filed and registered state certification trademarks in 73 countries, giving the Korean government a legal footing to ask local authorities to investigate, crack down and suspend customs clearance, and combined the trademarks with artificial intelligence-based authentication technology.

The international cooperation team received 7 million won ($5,286) for building a state-level "K-intellectual property diplomacy" framework tied to summit diplomacy. Intellectual property agreements signed in the presence of heads of state rose 6.5 times to 13 last year from two, the office said, and it reached a comprehensive cooperation arrangement with five Central Asian countries and a government-to-government agreement with China on addressing trademark squatting.

Two officials, Kim Ji-eon and Jeong Woo-yeol, received 5 million won ($3,776) for expanding and reorganizing the technology-leak response system, including a new three-division unit and 28 additional special judicial police officers, and for preparing for changes in the criminal justice system.

The trademark special judicial police investigation planning team also received 5 million won for the first repatriation and indictment by such officers of the head of a large counterfeit-goods operation who had fled to Vietnam, after an Interpol red notice. The team tracked the suspect's location around the clock and passed it to the local mission, leading to his arrest; one suspect was indicted in custody and three accomplices were indicted without detention, and all 7,800 counterfeit items seized, worth 3.7 billion won ($2.79 million) in genuine goods, were confiscated.

The application formalities examination team received 5 million won for processing 825 applications per examiner per day, 33.3 percent more than usual, despite a staffing cut to four from six and an 18.5 percent rise in applications from a year earlier, the office said.

"These special results are the fruit of the passion of everyone, from the policy and planning departments that set cross-ministerial intellectual property strategy to the working-level staff who quietly support the operation of the organization," said Korea Intellectual Property Office chief Kim Yong-sun. "We will continue to actively support employees' bold challenges to produce results that citizens can feel."