According to the revision of the Trademark Act, effective from October 24, 2019, the regulation will be removed stating that all owners of a jointly-owned trademark registration must apply for renewal together. Going forward, it will be sufficient if any one of the owners applies to renew the mark.

In this regard, KIPO stated that the reason for the change is to avoid situations where renewal is not possible if one owner using the mark cannot contact the other owner(s) for various legitimate reasons, or one owner maliciously refuses to agree to renew the jointly-owned mark in order to secretly apply for an identical trademark application alone.