A filing with KIPO that protects the visual appearance of a product — its shape, pattern, configuration, color, or any combination — granting you exclusive use for 20 years. It is a separate right from patents and trademarks.
Drawing formats, partial design, fees — seven questions our attorneys answer most often before clients file a Korean design.
A filing with KIPO that protects the visual appearance of a product — its shape, pattern, configuration, color, or any combination — granting you exclusive use for 20 years. It is a separate right from patents and trademarks.
Patents protect technical ideas; trademarks protect identifying marks (brands); designs protect product appearance. Filing all three on the same product is common — they layer to form a multi-faceted IP defense.
The creator is the natural person who actually conceived the design. The applicant is the individual or entity that will hold the registered right. A company commissioning an external designer is typically the applicant — provided rights are properly assigned.
A single 3D drawing file that clearly shows the product appearance. IGES, OBJ, STEP and STL can be uploaded with no extra cost; other formats (FBX, GLB, etc.) may incur a conversion fee.
Yes. Korea allows partial design applications, where you protect only a specific portion of an article — a handle, a button, a texture pattern. Narrowing the protected feature often improves grant likelihood and is highly defensible in litigation.
A single design filing combines KIPO's official fee and the attorney service fee, calculated on the checkout page. Format conversion adds a small fee; partial designs and multi-design filings have separate official fees that surface in real time.
A single application can cover up to 100 designs of the same article or matched-set article, dramatically lowering total filing cost. It is widely used for product lines with color, shape or texture variations.