Weekly Korean IP Headlines 02.20. 2013

According to KIPO, Korean singer psy’s management company, YG Entertainment recently applied additional application of ‘Gangnam Style’ trademarks for 20 items.  According to the original article from AsiaEconomy, YG previously applied trademarks for 40 items including fruit juice, beer, and cocktail drink etc.  Currently, there are 16 Gangnam Style trademarks in English and 39 trademarks in Korean. YG is aggressively applying trademark applications because some Korean domestic companies are applying trademark applications without paying loyalties to YG Entertainment. For instance, Korean Crown Bakery already applied ‘Crown Gangnam Style’ trademarks which is a slight modification of ‘Gangnam Style’ for 20 items including pudding, peanut cracker, rice cake, biscuit and etc. Meanwhile, applying ‘Gangnam Style’ trademark itself is deniable due to the word ‘Gangnam’ is the name of special place in Korea. Check out the original article from AsiaEconomy here.


 © YG Entertainment E-Shop  | Psy's Gangnam Style Character Goods

Korean cities Moonkyoung and Youngju are famous for their well-known local products, apples.  Not long ago, there were fight between those two cities because of their promotional words and phrases for apples.  Since 2010, Moonkyoung city used the phrase, ‘The Moonkyoung Apple that Snow White Loved’ to promote their apple.  However, Youngju city also used the phrase ‘The Youngju Apple Smitten by Snow White’ and advertised with this phrase since 2012.  Since both cities used the word ‘Snow White,’ customers got confused by that.  Moonkyoung city remonstrated against Youngju city for using the word, ‘Snow White’ since Moonkyoung city registered the trademark registration first. KIPO also gave an authoritative interpretation for this matter which could be a trademark violation if anyone uses the ‘Snow White’ other than Moonkyoung city.  Eventually, Youngju city gave up using ‘Snow White’ for its promotion and remove all those promotion phrases from their advertisement.  Korean Kyounghyang News reported.  Check out the original Korean article here. 

© erin & camera | Apple

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