Executive Summary
Trends in South Korea’s Intellectual Property Statistics for 2024 – Increase in Filings, Decrease in Registrations
Filing and Registration Statistics
According to the intellectual property statistics trends announced by the Korean Intellectual Property Office on January 6, 2025, the cumulative number of applications for patents, utility models, designs, and trademarks in 2024 increased by 0.7% year-on-year to 560,629.
When analyzing applications for individual intellectual property rights, patents increased by 1.4% year-on-year (246,245), designs increased by 1.0% (55,897), and trademarks increased by 0.3% (256,045). However, utility models decreased by 11.1% (2,442).
Meanwhile, the number of registrations decreased by 7.1% year-on-year. Specifically, there was a decrease in the number of registrations for patents (5.1%, 127,806), designs (4.7%, 46,981), and trademarks (9.1%, 158,090), with utility models showing the largest decrease of 16.0% (1,049).
These trends appear to be mainly due to decreased filings of patent, design, and trademark applications during the pandemic period. Considering the recent increase in the number of application filings, the number of registrations for intellectual property rights is likewise expected to increase in the future, but the number of registrations for utility models, which continues to decrease, is expected to decrease further in the future.
Regarding patent and utility model examination requests, there was no significant difference from the previous year, with a 0.5% decrease year-on-year. While the number of examination requests in December increased by 0.1% (22,471) compared to the same month of the previous year, the gap cumulated by November was not significantly narrowed.
Request for Trial
The number of trial requests received decreased by 7.6% year-on-year to 6,316. Considering that approximately 6,900 requests were received annually, it is expected that the number of requests in 2024 will ultimately fall short of the 15.3% increase seen in 2023 compared to 2022.