By Kim Hyun-cheol
Staff Reporter
Korean companies' overseas royalty payments increased for the first two months of the year, the central bank said Monday.
The overall royalty-related deficit in that two-month period reached $970 million, up 80.1 percent from $540 million a year ago, the Bank of Korea (BOK) said Monday.
This is the largest deficit for the balance of payment on patents, trademarks and other intellectual rights since the government started to compile the data since 1980.
Royalty deficits in the January-to-February period have been sharply growing over the last few decades. Their size was tallied at $20 million in 1980, but grew eight-fold to $160 million 10 years later before further jumping to $530 million in 2000.
Korea paid a total of $1.4 billion to overseas firms on royalties last year, up $590 million year-on-year, while earning $420 million in a $160-million growth.
A rebound in sales by Korean manufacturers, as well as the depreciation of the won, caused a rise in costs on royalties and other intellectual rights this year, the BOK said.
``Largely it's attributable to the overall economic condition coming back in shape. Also, companies postponed loyalty-related payments even at the expense of paying interest for the delay,'' an official of the national bank said.
Korea has been producing a substantial number of international patents in recent years. However, they are still behind most advanced countries and their contribution to the national economy is much lower than most major countries, industry watchers say.
In 2008, Korea ranked fourth, trailing the United States, Japan and China by applying for 170,632 international patents in total.
Korea produced 4.1 patents per $1 million investment in research and development. The number of patents from the same budget was 2.7 in Japan and 1.2 in the United States, according to Statistics Korea. However, this numerical advantage doesn't translate into profits.
Korean patents produced $2.1 million per case in gross domestic product (GDP) in 2007, while a Chinese patent made $25.3 million and a U.S. one, $7.4 million.
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