On December 27, 2024, the Korean IP Office (KIPO) announced that a bill including several Trademark Act amendments had passed the plenary session of the National Assembly. The amendments will take effect six months after the law's promulgation and are expected to come into effect around July 2025 (precise date not yet known).

The amendments include a shorter opposition period and increased punitive damages for willful trademark infringement, as discussed below:

SHORTER OPPOSITION PERIOD (2 months → 30 days)

Under Korean trademark practice, all applications are substantially examined for both absolute and relative refusal grounds, and once the examiner is convinced that no relevant grounds for refusal exist, the application is published for the purposes of inspection and opposition. Following the publication date, any party can object to the registration of the mark by filing an opposition with KIPO. 

The current deadline for filing an opposition is 2 months from the publication date of the application, but this will be shortened to 30 days.

(The opposition deadline itself cannot be extended. However, provided a formal notice of opposition is filed by the opposition deadline, the opponent is granted a further 30 days to substantiate the grounds for opposition via submission of a supplemental brief. The submission deadline for the supplemental brief can be extended for up to 60 days for national applications, but not for Madrid applications.)

As discussed in an earlier article, this change is in response to the increasing timeframe for trademark applications achieving registration.  By cutting the opposition period approximately in half, non-opposed applications will progress to registration around a month quicker, and as it is reported that only around 1% of all applications are opposed, the vast majority of applications will thus benefit from the amendment.

While good news for applicants, this does mean that brand owners will have less time to make a decision on whether or not to oppose a potentially problematic application, and watch service notifications will need to be reviewed and acted on more urgently.

INCREASED PUNITIVE DAMAGES (3x → 5x)

Provisions for treble damages in trademark and design infringement cases were first introduced in October 2020, following similar earlier provisions for patent and unfair competition cases. With patent and unfair competition laws introducing up to quintuple damage awards in amendments that took effect earlier this year (as reported here), it is now the turn of the Trademark Act to benefit from further strengthened damages provisions.

Willful/intentional acts of infringement that take place on or after the effective date of the amendment may be subject to up to 5x punitive damages. 

While the availability of treble damage awards was seen as a big step forward in addressing the need for stronger deterrents against infringement in Korea, where historical damage awards were not seen as sufficient to outweigh the profit that could be gained from infringement, the increase to quintuple damages aims to further discourage willful/intentional violations of trademark rights through higher financial consequences, as well as offer better compensation for trademark owners who often struggle to provide concrete evidence of the financial harm caused by infringement, for example in cases involving loss of market reputation or other indirect financial impacts.