By Kim Jae-won
The government said Monday that it will help the intellectual property (IP) market grow by supporting startups related to the business.
The Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) said it will invest billions of won in firms which offer services for companies with intellectual properties by evaluating their ideas and translating documents for them.
“We will set up four funds this year to be used for venture companies in the intellectual property market. Sizes range from 5 billion won to 20 billion won,” said Lee Han-kyu, an official of KIPO.
The announcement came a few months after economic ministers agreed to boost the intellectual property industry in a meeting. Intellectual property is one of key economic issues of Park Geun-hye’s “creative economy.”
KIPO said that the state-run Korea Development Bank is preparing to launch a non-practicing entity (NPE) by the end of this month. An NPE is an entity which holds a patent for a product or process but has no intentions of developing it.
Market watchers said it is hard to figure out the size of the IP market here because companies avoid announcing which intellectual property they buy or sell, saying it is a business secret. Korea’s tax code also does not specify income or expenses on the IP trade, blocking ways of collecting data on them.
Experts said Korea’s IP market has a long way to go to catch up on advanced countries. They said about 2,700 NPEs are doing their business in the U.S. with a wide range of business models while Korea has only a couple of firms doing such business.