South Korea stipulates that ‘Typeface’ is included in the ‘Product’ which is target of design
The judges Taeksoo JUNG and Soonmin KWON ‘The intrinsic characteristics of the font design are emphasized as a criterion for similarity.’
Taeksoo JUNG High Court Judge Patent Court of Korea
The 2020 International IP Court Conference an international exchange event of the professionals in the IP field consisting of five sessions which are status of international trials high technology and patent eligibility major issues in design litigation cross-border patent infringement and mock trials has been ended successfully on November 12.
In session 3 which is third program of conference sharing of opinion was accomplished about ‘Major Issues in Design Litigation’ by U.S South Korea Japan England and China’s guest speakers.
Taeksoo JUNG Patent Court of Korea high court judge. Since 2003 he has served as a judge of District Court including Seoul Central Daejeon Cheongju and Daejeon High Court. And he was a judge of Patent Court from 2012 to 2013 and was transferred to Supreme Court as a judicial researcher on IP cases in 2014. After serving as chief judge of Chungju Branch Court for two years He is currently at the Patent Court of Korea as a high court judge.
Soonmin KWON who is participated as a guest speaker serves as Judge of Patent court of Korea since 2018. He holds law degrees from Seoul National University(LL.B) was appointed as Judge in 1998 has worked as High Court Judge since 2013. He was invited as a visiting scholar at the Institute of Civil Procedure of the University of Bonn in Germany between 2005 and 2006. He served at the Office of Judicial Ethics & Inspection of the National Court Administration in 2010 and contributed to the publication of Judicial Ethics the first guidebook on the ethics of judges in Korea and co-authored Commentary of Civil law and online Commentary of Insolvency law.
Q: Can a typeface be registered as a design in your country? If so what is the legal basis? What are the standards to determine similarity of typeface designs in your country?
A: Since the Design Protection Act of Korea prescribes that a ‘typeface’ is included in the ‘article’ which are the subject of design (Article 2(i) of the Design Protection Act) typeface designs may be registered.
The Supreme Court of Korea as discussed in the above Decision 2012Hu597 held that in determining design registrability similarity should be judged based on whether the overall observation of appearance by comparison makes viewers feel different aesthetic sense and thus if the dominant characteristics are similar even if there are some differences in details they should be deemed similar and this legal principle should be equally applied to the typeface design. However typeface designs are different in that they need not meet the article requirement and various typeface designs have been developed in a wide range since the humanity started using characters while there are structural limitations in substantially diversifying the designs because the essential elements of the basic form and readability of the characters cannot be neglected. Thus this intrinsic nature of typeface should be sufficiently taken into account in determining similarity. Therefore considering the above characteristics it would be reasonable to determine the similarity range of typeface designs narrower than that of other designs.
This conference held on November 12 2020 was held at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Seoul under the theme of Court IP and Globalization with the method using parallel online and offline to prevent the spread out of Covid 19.
Focusing on IP5 which are United States China Japan and Germany about 300 IP related professionals from 8 nations around the world participated online and offline to share and progress IP issues with various cases.
The 2020 International IP Court Conference was ended in great success raising the status of the IP international trial in Korea covering five sessions and mock trials.
Soonmin KWON High Court Judge Patent Court of Korea
Photo of participating the live venue
The front view of 2020 International IP Court Conference venue
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