1. Reason for Revision

Due to the rapid development of information technology and the diversification of industries, the Patent Attorney Act has been revised (Implemented on July 28, 2016) so that the essential conditions for obtaining patent attorneys include the completion of intern training prescribed by the Presidential Decree; however, although insincere trainees were continuously found in patent attorney training, adequate sanctions were not provided; as a result, the need to revise the corresponding provisions was raised to improve the effectiveness of the training. Therefore, this proposed revision is intended to improve the effectiveness of collective training and to achieve the complete purpose of legislation in order to supply law consumers with qualified patent attorney services by stating insincere completion of training and performance evaluation as the reason for insincere completion of intern training for patent attorneys of the Enforcement Rules of the Patent Attorney Act and by establishing the basis for delegating detailed provisions on disapproval of intern training completion to subordinate statutes.

Also, it stipulates that the Personal Information Protection Committee should improve statutes that may infringe personal information and aims to improve the adequacy of processed information with minimization of personal information asked for issuance and registration of patent attorney licenses by deleting excessive personal information, such as registration places and names in Chinese characters, in order to meet the recommendation to improve personal information of the attached Form of the Enforcement Rules of the Patent Attorney Act.

2. Main Contents

A. Stating “insincere completion of training” as the reason for disapproval of intern training completion (Article 4 (1) 1 of the draft)

- In consideration of the purpose of the legislation of provisions, “insincere completion of training” is stated in the provisions in order to clarify the reason for disapproval of intern training completion of the corresponding Subparagraph.

B. Stating “performance evaluation” as the reason for disapproval of intern training completion (Article 4 (1) 2 of the draft).

- Reflecting Article 2 (8) of the revision to the Enforcement Decree of the Patent Attorney Act, the relevant grounds are specified so that intern training can be disapproved if the "performance evaluation result" fails to meet a certain standards.

C. The revision provides the basis for delegating detailed provisions on the disapproval of intern training completion to subordinate statutes (Article 4 (2) of the draft).

- The revision provides the basis to be established and notified by the Commissioner of the Korean Intellectual Property Office for the matters on disapproval of intern training completion to meet various environments of collective training.

D. Deletion of excessive personal information in the “attached Form” of the Enforcement Rules of the Patent Attorney Act (Attached Form 1, attached Form 1-2, attached Form 4, attached Form 5, attached Form 6, and attached Form 13).

- The revision deletes excessive personal information on the attached Form, such as “registration places” and “names in Chinese characters”, in order to protect personal information.