Korean tech firms beef up patent management, legal staff

Korean electronics firms are moving to bolster their patent management in an effort to better cope with growing technology infringement lawsuits with overseas rivals, market watchers said Monday.

LG Electronics Inc., which set up a patent center in 2001, plans to increase its current 200-strong staff by 30 percent by the end of next year, according to the company.

The plan comes on the heels of several patent rows involving foreign companies. LG Electronics and LG Innotek Co. have been embroiled in lawsuits with German’s Osram over light-emitting diode patents.

Last month, LG Electronics sued Toshiba Samsung Storage Technology Corp., a joint venture of Samsung Electronics Co. and Toshiba Corp., in a U.S. federal court for infringing optical-disk technology.

Samsung Electronics, locked in a high-stakes patent battle with rival Apple Inc., has also been increasing its patent management force. The number of employees that manage patent-related work stood at 450 as of the end of last year, compared with 250 in 2005.

“We can’t specify the exact number, but we plan to continuously bolster our patent-related workforce,” said a Samsung spokeswoman, adding the establishment of an intellectual property center in 2010 was part of the company’s move to systematize patent management.

Korean companies have been witnessing a rise in patent disputes with overseas rivals over the last two years, with a majority of the cases involving accusations of local firms breaching patents.

There were 278 patent litigations between local and foreign companies last year, growing 80.5 percent from the 154 in 2009, according to the data by the Korean Intellectual Property Office and the Korea Intellectual Property Protection Association.

Patent litigations lodged by U.S.-based non-practicing entities, also dubbed “patent trolls,” were one of the key threats, with the number of such cases more than doubling to 89 last year from 32 in 2009.

In a bid to better counter such threats, the government plans to ramp up efforts to protect local firms from costly patent rows.

Last month, media reports said the Fair Trade Commission, South Korea’s antitrust watchdog, will step up its crackdown on possible abuses of patents by foreign enterprises, with a focus on the IT and pharmaceutical industry. 

(Yonhap News)