[JoongAng Ilbo] Helping Korean companies file patents in Japan
[JoongAng Ilbo] Posted 2013-07-19 00:14 / Updated 2013-07-19 07:05
The first Korean patent attorney's office on the soil of Japan, a patent powerhouse
Patent attorney Won-gi Jung of "Aida & Jung"
"The world is in the midst of a patent war. This was made vividly clear in the patent litigation between Apple and Samsung. The importance of patents will only continue to grow."
Patent attorney Won-gi Jung (50, pictured) is the first Korean to open a patent office in Japan. After founding the patent office "NEIT" in Korea in 1997 and working there, he established the Japanese patent corporation "Aida & Jung (A&J)" this past May. He co-founded it with Shinji Aida, a Japanese patent attorney who has run a patent office in Japan for more than ten years. Jung himself also holds a Japanese patent attorney license. From 2007, he spent six years traveling between Japan and Korea while studying for the qualification, and obtained his license last year.
"Over the past twenty-some years working as a patent attorney in Korea, I handled quite a few cases representing Japanese companies that wanted to file patents with the Korean government. As I did so, a thought occurred to me: why not represent Korean companies that want to file patents with the Japanese government?"
As word spread of the office's strengths—being a place in Japan where Korean is spoken and the culture of Korean companies is understood—it took on more than 20 patent cases within just two months of opening. For now, most of its clients are Korea-based companies operating in Japan, such as LG Chem. His goal is to build a mid-sized patent office sought after not only by Korean companies but also by major Japanese corporations.
Jung noted that "Japan is the world's second-largest patent nation, with some 340,000 patent applications filed each year," adding that "for a patent specialist, simply working in such fertile ground carries great significance."
Text by reporter Hye-min Park
Photo by intern reporter Yun-seong Gu
Reporter Hye-min Park