Pursuant to the revised Patent Law that will be enforced from March 1, 2017, an examiner shall be able to order an applicant to submit the examination result data for a foreign application from which a Korean patent application is claiming a priority pursuant to the Paris Convention.  A Korean patent application shall not be rejected even if the data of foreign examination results is not submitted, but the examination thereof can be postponed until the submission of such data.

The Korean Intellectual Property Office can obtain the examination results data from the USPTO, EPO, JPO and SIPO.  Therefore, it is anticipated that this system will be utilized mainly for Korean patent applications that are claiming a priority based on foreign countries, excluding from the U.S., European countries, Japan and China.  Additionally, the revised Utility Model Law that will be enforced from March 1, 2017 also includes the same revision.

(Effective from March 1, 2017)