Korea Intellectual Property Office visits AI startup to hear patent concerns

The Korea Intellectual Property Office said it sent officials to the Seoul research lab of Ballet & Model AI to hear the patent and commercialization problems facing companies that build physical artificial intelligence, the systems that let machines perceive and act on the world around them.

The visit brought the office's staff together with the company's researchers and executives, including Chief Executive Choi Jun-seok, to collect the intellectual property issues companies raise in the field and feed them into policy.

Ballet & Model AI is working with a research team led by Professor Joo Jae-gul of KAIST's artificial intelligence graduate school on an education system that combines the arts with physical AI technology, the office said. The company is seeking patent rights on its core technology ahead of taking it to market, and officials were set to present their work on object recognition and tracking and show early prototypes, along with concerns about protecting the technology and building a business around it.

The government side planned to walk the company through what to watch for when publishing research results so that patent rights can still be secured, and to outline patent trends in object recognition and tracking and how the value of patented technology is assessed.

"I hope this meeting helps us protect our research results as intellectual property and explore a commercialization strategy," Choi said. The company would keep working closely with the office to secure rights to its core technology and bring it to market, he said.

Park Jae-hoon, head of the office's electricity and telecommunications examination bureau, said he expected Ballet & Model AI's research to lead to strong intellectual property rights and to the company's growth, and that the office would strengthen its on-site support so that companies' core technology can be turned into intellectual property and revenue.