Designs
Design rights protect the look of your product in Korea — shape, pattern, color, and increasingly the screens and graphics your users touch. We secure that appearance quickly and defensibly through MOIP.
Korea's Design Protection Act offers unusually flexible tools for appearance-based protection: partial designs, related designs, sets, and registrable screen and graphic image designs. Used well, they build a layered wall around a product family rather than a single registration.
For overseas applicants we translate your product portfolio into a filing strategy that fits MOIP practice — choosing the examined or non-examined track, framing drawings to the right claim scope, and sequencing filings to preserve novelty and priority.
Industrial (product) design registration and protection in Korea, including partial and set designs.
Design search & strategy
Clearance and prior-design searches, freedom-to-operate reads, and a filing map across partial, related, and set designs to maximize coverage for a product line.
Registration filing
Drafting and filing single and multiple-design applications, including partial designs, related designs, and sets of articles, with Paris/Hague priority claims where relevant.
Examination & formality response
Handling MOIP office actions, drawing and formality objections, novelty and similarity rejections, amendments, and divisional applications through to registration.
Screen & GUI designs
Protecting graphic user interfaces, icons, and graphic images — including screens displayed on a device — with drawing sets prepared for MOIP's image-design requirements.
Four steps, one point of contact.
Search
We assess registrability against prior designs and identify the strongest protectable features of the product's appearance.
Strategy & drawings
We decide the track and structure — whole, partial, related, or set — and prepare or direct drawings that fix the intended claim scope.
Filing
We file with MOIP, claiming priority where available, and can bundle multiple designs of the same Locarno class in one application.
Examination & registration
We respond to any office actions and formality issues, then complete registration and manage the annuity schedule.
Partial designs
Korea allows registration of a distinctive part of an article — a handle, a grip, an icon — protecting the feature even when the rest of the product varies.
Related designs
Variations on your own principal design can be registered as related designs, extending protection across a family of similar looks.
Examined vs. non-examined
Certain article classes (e.g., fast-cycle goods) can use a non-examined registration track for speed, while others go through substantive examination.
20-year term
A registered design right lasts up to 20 years from the filing date, subject to annuities.
12-month grace period
A self-disclosure within 12 months before filing can be excepted from novelty-destroying prior art if properly claimed.
Screen & GUI designs
Graphic images, GUIs, and screen displays are registrable subject matter in Korea when presented per MOIP drawing rules.
Are drawings or photographs required?
Yes — a design application is defined by its views. We prepare or direct a drawing or photograph set (typically front, back, sides, top, bottom, perspective) that fixes exactly what you claim.
Can I file several designs in one application?
Korea is one-design-per-application, but a multiple-design application lets you file many designs of the same Locarno class together, reducing cost and administration.
Can I protect a product and its GUI separately?
Yes. The physical article and its graphic user interface are distinct subject matter and are usually best protected by separate, coordinated filings.
How fast can I get protection?
It depends on the track. Non-examined registration for eligible classes is markedly faster, while examined designs take longer but yield a substantively vetted right.
Not sure which route fits? Ask us.
Describe your matter and we’ll map the MOIP route, timeline and cost — with a fixed quote.