KIPO Completes Digitalization of Design Exam.

With the development of an intelligent system for searching designs, KIPO has completely automated the examination of design applications, thereby significantly shortening the examination period and enhancing the quality of examinations.

In the past, KIPO conducted documentary examinations mainly by comparing design applications or registrations and the drawing files of product catalogues collected in the market after displaying the drawings of design applications in the form of a folding screen.
At the end of 2003, KIPO completed a design and product database encompassing about 2.5 million designs it also provided each examiner with two 21-inch LCD monitors. In January this year, KIPO launched an intelligent search system that can search images quickly. KIPO has consequently converted all the procedures for design examinations, including the procedures for examining drawings and for searching and dispatching registration decisions, into a completely automated paperless administration.

Of the two LCD monitors given to each examiner, one monitor shows the designs of new applications, while the other searches for and compares similar designs from among the 2.5 million designs on the design database. The system can search tens of thousands of designs per minute, not only reducing the examination time by one-third but also improving the accuracy of examinations.
The technology for editing drawings also has been incorporated into the new processing system. Examiners can accurately detect any error in the design drawings and notify the applicants of the error. The editing device can also be used for revision or correction, thus expediting the return of the corrected designs.

KIPO plans to continually promote improvements to the system to facilitate the acquisition and protection of IPRs for designers. It will also strive to enhance its design examination quality by such means as expanding the design database and introducing new technologies for image searches.

Korea Rises to World's 7th in Int'l Patent Applications.

In 2003, Korea was listed as the world's seventh largest country in the number of international patent applications under PCT (Patent Cooperation Treaty), recording 2,947 cases and accounting for 2.7% of the global total. The number also represents a 15.5% year-on-year increase from 2002 when Korea ranked eighth.

The ranking of the number of international patent applications filed in 2003 was in the order of the United States, Japan, Germany, the U.K., France, Netherland, Korea and Sweden. Last year, Korea outpaced Sweden which ranked seventh in 2002.

Korea stood out among developing countries, followed by China, India, Republic of South Africa, Singapore, Brazil, etc.

The rankings by applicant among developing countries showed that LG Electronics and Samsung Electronics filed 267 and 216 applications, respectively, and stood first and second, while LG Chemical (41 cases), CJ (37 cases) and Korea Electronics & Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) (34 cases) ranked sixth, eighth and ninth respectively, enhancing the global position of Korean enterprises. As an individual, Sohn Young-Shik filed a total of 34 applications and ranked ninth, together with ETRI.

PCT is an international treaty to make overseas patent application procedures easier for enterprises and inventors around the world. Korea signed the treaty in 1984, and has been joined by 123 countries as of January 2004.

A KIPO official said the reason for the increase in Korea's international patent applications is that filing of the applications in the Korean language became possible owing to KIPO's strengthened international activities, in addition to domestic firms' enhanced awareness of the need for international protection of their technologies.

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. announced on 3rd that Samsung has developed a metal-insulator-metal (MIM) capacitor utilizing titaniumnitride (TiN) electrode, which opened an era of processing D RAM 70 nano for the first time in the pertinent field.

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. in continuance of having succeeded in developing 70 nano flash memory product for the first time in the world, has succeeded in developing the next generation 70 nano metal capacitor process for the first time in the pertinent field, and further strengthened its position as a leader.

Samsung spokesman said that "until now, the silicon capacitor technology has been used. However, if the micro-process of 80 nano or less is applied, a phenomenon of which a capacitor will fall at side will occur, and thus the pertinent field considered 80 nano as the limit of the D RAM process technology. "

The metal capacitor process can reduce the size of the capacitor by 30% compared to the conventional silicon capacitor process, and thus such process is a technology suitable for the next generation large capacity D RAM of 512 Mb or more. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. has applied the currently developed metal capacitor process technology to a 90 nano 512Mb D RAM, completed inspection for commercialization and is planning to introduce a 70 nano level 512Mb product within this year.

Meanwhile, the 70 nano D RAM process technology exclusively developed by Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. has been introduced at VLSI and International Electronic Devices Meeting (IEDM) which are worldwide famous academies in the field of semiconductor, and adopted as an excellent thesis. Currently, patent applications related to said technology are filed internationally.

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