Weekly Korean IP Headlines 03.29. 2013

Korean Yonhap news agency reported on 25th, the government plans to seek triple R&D support for small businesses.  The government plans to increase its support for the country’s small and medium enterprises in an effort to create jobs and also strengthen the country’s overall competitiveness, the commerce ministry said Monday (25th). 

 © NS Newsflash 

The ministry plans to allocate the half of its entire R&D fund for SMES in 2017 and also triple the amount of from the current 54 billon won to 170 billion won ($152 million) in 2017. This will help increase the number of the so-called small but strong companies to around 300, the ministry added.  The role for KIPO is “very important” given the links between creativity and profits in the “creative economy” of the future. Click here for the original Yonhap News article. 

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Creative Advertisements!

creativecriminals.com

A Nurse and a cleaning man is working at their workplace. Both of them are pushing a wheelchair and mops and it looks like they are riding a motorcycle. It seems that they want to ride Harley Davidson so badly and can’t stop thinking about it! This is a funny advertisement by Harley Davidson.

coloribus.com

This is a car advertisement by Nissan. The ‘Cube’ of Nissan has unique backside with asymmetric design. Nissan wants to say that cars don’t have to have same designs with symmetry when   even our faces are not bilateral symmetry. The faces looks sunny and the ad copy ‘symmetric sucks’ is catchy. 

adsoftheworld.com

Fruits and vegetables which should be kept in freezer are on the shelves in living room. It won’t be possible if the living room is not cold enough. This is an air conditional advertising and it delivers how their new turbo cooling system is powerful.   

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Nokia Defend its patented technologies from Google's VP8 video codec

flickr.com|photo credit John.Karakatsanis

Nokia announced that they refused to use royalty-free or FRAND (fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory) terms for their patented technologies which is important to VP8 video codec, IDG news reported.

VP8 is a video compression format owned by Google. Google provided an irrevocable patent promise on its patents for implementing the VP8 and released a specification of the format under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. (Wikipedia)

Nokia filed a list of patents with the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) on March 21. It listed 64 patents and 22 pending applications. These technologies are related to Google’s VP8 video codec.

Read original article here

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9237869/Nokia_uses_patents_to_block_Google_VP8_video_codec 

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German Traditional Snack, Schneeballen Trademark Litigation in Korea

A Schneeball is a pastry which is popular in the area of Rothenburg ob der Taubber in Germany.  The name means snowball in English, derived from its round ball-like shape.  The main ingredients are flour, eggs, sugar, and butter, cream and plum schnapps.  It is made of short crust pastry rolled into balls and decorated in the traditional fashion with icing sugar.  This snowball type crisp pasty need to crack it with its traditional wooden hammer.

© Alaskan Dude | German snack Schneeballen

In Korea, Schneeballen Korea imported German traditional snack called Schneeballen, and it became popular in a very short time.  Schneeballen Korea registered its trademark and service mark in August, 2012. 

Kipris search result of Schneeballen

After Schneeballen became popular, many other similar trademarks created by other firms.  Schneeballen Korea announced that they will take legal action against these infringers and sent warning notices to them.  Those infringed firms copied not only its trademark but also its package designs with wooden hammers.  Schneeballen Korea judged those companies infringed Schneeballen Korea’s right and sent warning notices to Schnee-pang, Schnee-berry, Schnee-kugen, Schnee-ball, Snow-Ballen, and Schneeballen House. 

Kipris search result | Smiliar trademarks of Schneeballen 

Schneeballen Korea also noted that customers misunderstood and confused infringed products with its original product.  Schneeballen Korea mentioned that they will take every legal action against all of the infringers.

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India company Micromax ruled to pay royalties to Ericsson.

Micromaxinfo.com

Ericsson won a patent licence case against an Indian mobile company, Micromax. The Delhi High Court has ruled that Micromax have to pay Ericsson for royalty on every device sold, The Times of India reported.

This rulling is part of an interim arrangement between the two compaies. The High Court agreed to this arrangement that Micromax pay royalties for all devices related to Ericsson’s 2G, 3G and EDGE patents.

These two companies are involved in several countries, including Motorola, Nokia, Microsoft, Oracle, Google, Sony , HTC, and LG. All of court cases are involving smartphone technology patents, The Times of India added. 

Read original article here

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-03-26/telecom/38039353_1_smartphone-patent-war-samsung-royalty

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World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Advertisements

ads-ngo.com

This is WWF (World Wildlife Fund) advertisement to tell people how the animal extinction is important issue. There is a wild animal which scares people in the picture on the left. On the right, there is nothing to be scared but there is a short advertising copy ‘more terrifying’, ‘more horrifying’ and ‘more harrowing’. This simple picture and copy emphasizes that the animal extinction will be more terrifying, horrifying and harrowing.      

boredpanda.com

People love to buy parts of wild animals as souvenirs. In this ad, the track line in red which the traveler’s trunk made signifies blood. It shows how cruel to buy exotic animals just for fun and memories.

boredpanda.com

Leopard patterns are popular in fashion industry. But people don’t know how they are destroying our nature by killing wild animals for fur.

DMC Tower 18th~19th Floor, 189 Sungam-ro, Mapo-gu, Seoul, Korea

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Minister of Korean Employment and Labor visited WIPS

Hanam Bang, the minister of Employment and Labor visited WIPS CO., LTD. on March 22nd.  WIPS has highly acclaimed as an intellectual property service provider which has contributed to job creation and discovered new growth power.  WIPS started with 12 people in 1999, 250 people were working in 2011 and hired 153 more people in 2012.

© WIPS

Bang, the minister had a meeting with Hyoungchil Lee, the CEO of WIPS CO., LTD. In this meeting, Bang received a briefing about the business of WIPS. and its employment status and so on.

 

© WIPS | <CEO Hyoungchil Lee (in the left) and
Hanam Bang, the minister of Employment and Labor (in the middle)>

After the meeting, the minister looked around the office and met employees of WIPS.



© WIPS

Also, the minister had a meeting with younger workers of WIPS in their 20’s and 30’s. In this meeting, younger workers of WIPS made a recommendation to the government about the working environment for the young.

© WIPS

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Samsung Countersues Ericsson and Seeks sales ban

samsung.com

Samsung has countersued Ericsson, a Swedish phone maker which sued Samsung for a patent infringement in November. It was sued last year for a same reason by Ericsson.

Samsung said that Ericsson infringed 20 of its patents and claimed a permanent injunction to ban the sales of Ericsson products which infringe Samsung’s patents, Wall Street Journal reported.

Samsung declared that it's "a willing licensee," but that "Ericsson demands unreasonable terms and conditions…Ericsson no doubt has plans to extract unreasonable fees from the rest of the industry unless stopped by Samsung here." Ericsson announced in a statement, "We anticipate that the court will resolve the claims in our favor and we hope that this will lead to a cross-license agreement on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms."

These lawsuits would not be a big fight because they are not considered as a big competitors, Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Mark Newman added to WSJ.

Read Original article here

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324103504578371902710149908.html

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Images of Funny Advertisments

adsoftheworld.com

People overlook the importance of seat belts when they drive. Four portraits are displayed on the wall and they have a black ribbon on each frame. This ad was made by the German Road Safety Organisation (DVW). DVW wanted to give message to all the German drivers that buckling up can save lives.

toxel.com

This is ‘Smart’ of Mercedes Benz ad. There is a bunch of fuel cans in red, and one of them doesn’t look same as the others. It has much smaller size and a ‘Smart’ name label. This shows that the ‘Smart’ is a small size car and need much less fuel than other vehicles.

adsoftheworld.com

This is Kagatini’s Kitchen knife ad. It describes how strong and sharp the knife is. ‘Don’t drop it’ sounds very catchy and deliver the message effectively.

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Twitter Celebrating its 'Patent' birthday present

flikr.com|photo credit Abigail Silvester |CC BY 2.0

One of famous SNS site, Twitter, celebrated its seventh birthday today and has been granted a patent for its online messaging service. Twitter’s patent originally filed in 2007, it describes “device independent message distribution platform,”, Wired reported. Read full patent filling here.

The patent was originally filed by Jack Dorsey and Biz Stone, and the patent describes as “A system (and method) for device-independent point to multipoint communication is disclosed. The system is configured to receive a message addressed to one or more destination users, the message type being, for example, Short Message Service (SMS), Instant Messaging (IM), e-mail, Web form input, or Application Program Interface (API) function call.” Frank Griffin of tmcnet added.

Read more articles related Twitter Patent 

• Twitter Just Got a Patent for Twitter, Swears It Won't Be Abusive
• Twitter Patents Its Service As It Reaches Seventh Birthday

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US Supreme Court Protects Resellers from Copyright

flickr.com | photo credit TexasGOPVote.com

Books, video disc and other copyrighted goods manufactured overseas can be imported and sold in the US without the permission of the copyright owners. The Supreme Court has ruled for publishers and online retailers such as eBay, LA times reported.

This case started when Supap Kirtsaeng, a student from Thailand, sold low cost textbook in his native country and resold them in the US for earning money. John Wiley & Sons, the textbook publisher, sued him and won $600,000 from a New York jury.

But Supreme Court reversed the verdict against Kritsaeng. The court decided the copyright owners have the protection for the first sale, not resale copies imported. "I'm delighted the Supreme Court has found the logic in the statute that has eluded many others," Sam P. Israel, the attorney of Kirtsaeng said. "There is nothing inherent in the copyright law that makes subsequent sales after a first sale illegal."

Read original article here

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-court-copyright-20130320,0,6312211.story

 

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Weekly Korean IP Headlines 03.20. 2013

Korea Yonhap News agency reported that LG has ranked 3rd in North American Smartphone market.  According to the data by market researcher Strategy Analytics, LG accounted for 7.1 percent of the Smartphone market last year in terms of shipments, trailing its rivals Apple Inc. with 37.6 percent and Samsung Electronics with 26.6 percent. Data showed Friday, on March 15th, LG Electronics Inc. captured the No.3 spot in the North American Smartphone market in 2012 on strong sales of its new premium brands.  Click here for the Yonhap News article.



©sam_churchill | LG Optimus G Pro

According to the Verge, Samsung Electronics Co. and LG Electronics Inc. are in a patent row over technology that enables users to control their Smartphones with their eyes.  The feature is called Smart Pause by Samsung and Smart Video by LG, and makes users pause a playing video by looking away from the screen.  LG notes that the eye tracking technology applied for the relevant patent in 2009 and plans to check if Samsung infringed or not. However, Samsung denies infringing LG’s patent. Click here for the detailed original article.


©Samsung | Galaxy S4, Captured Image from Samsung Official Web

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THX Sues Apple for Infringing Speaker Technology

thx.com

Hollywood sound effects firm THX has filed a patent suit against Apple. It was for infringing speaker technology of the iPhone, iPad and iMac, Bloomberg reported. The technology is a system for a speaker unit which can be connected to computers and flatsceen television. In the lawsuit, THX said the patent infringement is causing the company "monetary damage and irreparable harm,". 

THX was founded in 2002, and named from George Lucas’s first film, THX 1138, according to Wookieepedia, a website about “Star Wars.” Blooberg added.  Marika Knapp, a spokeswoman for THX, said in an e-mail that the company doesn’t comment on pending legal matters. Colleen Patterson, spokeswoman for Apple, declined to comment on the complaint. 

Read original article here

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-15/thx-ltd-founded-by-george-lucas-sues-apple-in-patent-case-1-.html

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Creative inventions !

inewidea.com

This is a bed ladders for the elderly. This ladder is not for kids to go up for their bed at night. It is for elderly who need help to get up in the morning. They hang the ladder under their feet and use it whenever they’d like to get up by climbing the ladder. This creative item will be helpful to elderly men living alone.

yankodesign.com

When people wake up in the morning, sometimes we need more than the bell of an alarm clock. The alarm in the pillow rings in the morning, we pull the both side of pillow. This is the best way to wake up and start a day with a good stretch!

yankodesign.com

This ‘Smart Hanger’ has many useful functions. It is not a just hanger, it’s more a portable device which can be holding clothing. It has clothing care system to remove bad smells and kill clothing germs. This will be perfect for suits, dresses, uniforms or outdoor jackets that are difficult to care at home.  

DMC Tower 18th~19th Floor, 189 Sungam-ro, Mapo-gu, Seoul, Korea

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China, Taiwan Tel: +82-2-726-1038, 1130 | Fax: +82-2-777-7334 | global@wips.co.kr