Korea Intellectual Property Office forum to weigh AI's challenge to IP rights

The National Intellectual Property Committee said it will convene the 2026 Intellectual Property International Forum in Seoul on Nov. 9, with generative AI's collision with copyright, trade secrets and patent standards as the agenda.

The forum, now in its fifth year, is the stage the National Intellectual Property Committee uses to air the issues of the day with foreign and domestic specialists and to test policy directions from a government-wide vantage.

Three sessions break the problem down. The first asks who owns what a generative AI produces, with Nyeemah Grazier, a senior patent attorney in the policy and international affairs office of the United States Patent and Trademark Office, presenting an international comparison of the standards for recognizing IP rights in AI-generated output. Choi Chul of Hankuk University of Foreign Studies chairs, with Sohn Seung-woo, senior adviser at Yulchon, and Han Soo-yeon, chief executive of T&K Entertainment, discussing rights conflicts that have already reached the content industry.

Session two turns to the line between disclosure and secrecy. Yogesh Pai, director of the patent treaties law division at the World Intellectual Property Organization, will speak on the future of trade secret protection, joined by Park Sung-soo of Kim & Chang and Kim Seo-woo, CJ's head of intellectual property legal affairs, in a discussion chaired by Chung Jin-gun of Kangwon National University's law school.

The third session looks at physical AI, where the data and technical standards behind it become commercial terrain. Tammy Pennington Rhodes of Osha Bergman Watanabe & Burton will present on how physical AI is reshaping industrial structure, with Sohn Do-il of Yulchon chairing and Hwang Young-kyu, chief executive of Alchera, and Lee Jae-seok, a vice president at Megazone, debating standards, open platforms and IP strategy.

Kang Min-goo, chief executive of the law firm Doul, delivers the keynote on the structural shifts AI is forcing on the intellectual property order.

The committee, which reviews and coordinates the government's intellectual property policies and plans under the prime minister, said it will take the opinions raised at the forum and examine them with the relevant ministries for possible policy tasks.

"Even as AI technology shakes the boundaries of intellectual property, people stand at its center," said Kye Seung-kyun, the committee's civilian chairman. "We must look in a balanced way at the various positions of rights holders, users and developers so that technological innovation and the protection of creators' rights can be harmonized."

The event runs from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Grand Ballroom Halla on the third floor of Seoul Dragon City in Yongsan District, Seoul.