Science ministry, patent office turn to standards in race for physical AI

The Ministry of Science and ICT and the Korean Intellectual Property Office are staging the 2026 Global ICT Standards Conference (GISC) from Nov. 2 to 4 at the El Tower in Yangjae, southern Seoul, the ministry said. The event marks its 10th anniversary this year and is expected to draw about 1,000 experts from Korea and abroad.

The conference is built around a view that AI moves too fast for the formal standard-setting channels of bodies such as the International Telecommunication Union and the International Organization for Standardization, and that faster private-sector standards matter just as much. Participants include the standard-setting bodies MLCommons and IEEE, the regional standards body ETSI and Singapore's Infocomm Media Development Authority.

The program opens with a keynote by Chang Young-jae, a professor at KAIST, on autonomous manufacturing using physical AI, cases of it on factory floors and what standards must do for the technology to spread. A talk session by Korean and foreign experts follows on how to spread AI and ICT standards and patents.

The organizers will also present the status and direction of the AI Partnership Project, which Korea's Telecommunications Technology Association and ETSI are pursuing with the US Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions and Japan's Telecommunication Technology Committee, among others. A total of 27 commendations and awards will go to institutions and companies that contributed to national competitiveness in AI and ICT standards and patents.

The three days are split into a global track covering AI, quantum and satellite communications standards strategy, and a domestic track centered on industry, academia and research institutes. The domestic track includes sessions on ICT standards and patent results, a seminar on standard-essential patents, a public hearing on a standards framework for physical AI and ICT convergence, and a seminar on future innovation standards.

"Standards are the rules that let different technologies and systems interoperate, and standardization matters for getting ahead technologically," said Lee Do-kyu, director-general of the ministry's information and communications policy office. He said the government would expand investment in securing international standards and patents alongside technology development and would build an open ecosystem to help Korean technology spread globally.

Kim Il-kyu, head of the patent office's intellectual property policy bureau, said major economies including the United States and Japan treat standards as part of their strategies for dominance and have strengthened national standards and patent strategies. "The Korean Intellectual Property Office will strengthen policies to secure standard-essential patents so that high-value standard patents can be created from the research and development stage in core future ICT fields such as next-generation communications and physical AI," he said.