Pursuant to the previous Korean Design Act, if a design was opened to the public either in or outside of Korea, but is filed within six (6) months from the opened date, the design application was deemed not to fall under “lack of novelty and creativity due to its opened design” and was registrable by claiming “Exception of Lack of Novelty”, if there is no other refusal ground.

However, pursuant to the revised Korean Design Act, which is applied to design applications filed on and after September 22, 2017, the time period to claim “Exception of Lack of Novelty” has been extended to twelve (12) months.