IP Newsletter | Spring 2016
	TRADEMARK, DESIGN, COPYRIGHT & UNFAIR COMPETITION
	New Examination Guidelines for Screen Image Designs
	The Korean Intellectual Property Office ("KIPO") recently published new examination guidelines (the "Guidelines") specifically concerning the registration of screen image designs, such as GUIs, graphic images, and icons. The new Guidelines have been effective since the beginning of this year, and seek to address the growing need for detailed guidance in response to the increase in screen image design registrations in recent years. The Guidelines illustrate the basic general examination requirements relevant to screen image designs with various examples, and have substantially revised the previous practice to take into consideration the unique nature of such designs. Some of the more interesting revisions in the new Guidelines are as follows:
	Article Requirement A design must be related to an actual product (or portion of a product) to be protected under the Korean Design Protection Act. The Guidelines expand on this requirement with respect to screen image designs, explaining that a registration for such a design may be granted even if the design is only temporarily displayed, as long as the portion of the article where the design is displayed is specified. The Guidelines effectively expand the types of articles that can be registered in connection with screen image designs by expressly including certain images that are displayed through a projection method, as long as the image is projected onto a specified portion of the article. For example, an applicant can register a "head-up display" design for a "car's front windshield displaying the screen image design," as long as the portion of the windshield that contains the projected HUD is specified (a "head-up display" is a means by which certain navigational information (such as car speed) is projected onto the interior of the windshield so as to be visible to the driver without looking down). However, designs for articles involving projection images which do not describe where the image is projected may not be registered. Protectable Screen Image Unprotectable Screen Images
	Animated Designs In the past, in order to register a design for an animated image, an applicant was required to file drawings for each step of the animation process. The Guidelines simplify applications for designs that contain commonly used or understood animations, such as "drop down menus." Applicants are now permitted to submit only two drawings for such designs, from before and after the animation is complete.
	Priority Claims In order to claim priority to a previous foreign design application, a design filed in Korea generally must be shown to be identical to the earlier design. In practice, screen image designs in Korea are usually filed as "partial designs" to benefit from broader protection, in which the drawings use dotted lines to indicate the article itself (which is the unclaimed portion). However, this practice can result in priority claiming difficulties at KIPO because there are several jurisdictions that do not have a partial design registration system (such as China, Brazil, Australia, Malaysia, Mexico, etc.), and applications in these countries for screen image design registrations must claim the entire article. As a result, it often has been difficult to demonstrate to KIPO that a Korean partial design application claiming priority to a design application in one of these jurisdictions is identical to the earlier design for priority purposes. The Guidelines address this issue by including a new exception for priority claims involving screen image designs, which will now be recognized as long as the designs are "essentially" identical.
	Similarity of Screen Image Designs The Guidelines clarify that once a screen image design is published (either through a design registration or in other materials), further applications seeking to register the same screen image design may no longer be allowed as lacking creativity, even if the design is claimed for different types of articles than the prior art (e.g., filing a second GUI application for tablets despite having already registered the same GUI for televisions). Further, for design applications designating display panels as the associated articles, KIPO will treat all display panels as substantially equivalent (such as those included in cellphones, refrigerators, dashboards, etc.) when determining similarity to a prior registered design for novelty purposes.
	Overall, the new Guidelines make it easier for applicants to obtain registrations for screen image designs, by clarifying the handling of various issues specific to such designs.
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	If you have any questions regarding this article, please contact:
	Nayoung KIM nkim@kimchang.com Seung-Joon JI sjji@kimchang.com
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