Trademark registration in Korea for foreign brands

The story repeats. A European cosmetics brand exhibits at a beauty fair in Seoul; six months later a Korean company files its name. An American software company signs a distributor; when the relationship ends, the distributor owns the Korean trademark. A Chinese consumer brand launches on a Korean marketplace and is told it is infringing a mark registered by someone it has never heard of. In each case the brand had rights at home and none in Korea.

This guide explains how Korean trademark law works, how a foreign company files, what to file, how long it takes and costs, how to deal with someone who filed first, and how to keep the registration alive. The checklist tests your current position.

First to file, not first to use

Under Article 35 of the Trademark Act, where two parties apply for identical or similar marks for identical or similar goods, the earlier applicant (선출원, seonchurwon) gets the registration. Korean trademark rights arise from registration with the Korean Intellectual Property Office (특허청, teukheocheong) (KIPO), not from use. A brand that has sold in Europe or the United States for decades has, in principle, no Korean rights until it registers.

Korean law does protect famous foreign marks against obvious abuse. Article 34 of the Trademark Act refuses registration of marks identical or similar to marks well known to Korean consumers, and of marks filed for an unfair purpose — to free-ride on a foreign mark, block its entry or extract a payment — that copy a mark recognised in Korea or abroad. A separate ground refuses marks filed by someone who knew of the mark through a business relationship with its owner, such as an agent or distributor. These grounds help, but they require evidence and argument; a registration in your own name requires neither.

A trademark in Korea belongs to whoever reached KIPO first. Make sure that is you.

Voixa Korea

Two ways to file

The two routes to a Korean registration.

Korea has been a member of the Madrid system since 2003. A Madrid designation is efficient when a brand is filing in several countries, but Korean examiners are strict about the wording of goods and services, and international descriptions are frequently objected to. A direct filing through a Korean patent attorney (변리사, byeollisa) lets the description be drafted for Korean practice from the start. A foreign applicant without a domicile in Korea must act through a Korean representative — a patent administrator (특허관리인, teukheo gwalliin) — under the Patent Act as applied to trademarks.

If you have filed at home within the last six months, you can claim Paris Convention priority (우선권, useongwon) in Korea under Article 46 of the Trademark Act: the Korean application is treated as filed on your home filing date, which can defeat a copyist who filed in between.

What to file

The mark

File the brand in the form you use: a word mark in Latin letters is the core. Consider also a logo, and — often overlooked — the brand in Hangul (한글, hangeul). Korean consumers search, speak and remember brands in Hangul; a third party who registers the Hangul transliteration of your name can cause real trouble even if you own the Latin version. Where the transliteration is not obvious, pick the one Korean customers will use and register it.

The classes

Korea uses the Nice classification. Each class is a separate fee and a separate scope of protection. Cover the classes in which you actually sell — cosmetics in Class 3, clothing in Class 25, software in Class 9, online retail services in Class 35 — and those where you plan to within a few years. A fashion brand selling only through its own e-commerce site still needs Class 35 for retail services, and many brands forget it.

The owner

File in the name of the company that owns the brand worldwide, usually the parent, not the Korean subsidiary or distributor. The Korean company can be licensed to use it. A registration in a distributor’s name is the beginning of most Korean trademark disputes.

From application to registration

Before filing, search KIPO’s public database, KIPRIS, for identical and similar marks; a Korean attorney’s clearance opinion is worth having for important brands. After filing, an examiner reviews the mark for distinctiveness, conflict with earlier marks and the other grounds in Article 34. Examination typically takes around a year from filing; an expedited examination (우선심사, useon simsa) is available for a fee where the applicant is already using the mark or preparing to, and can bring a decision within a few months.

If the examiner raises objections, the applicant responds within the deadline set, usually by argument or by amending the goods. Once the mark is accepted, it is published, and anyone may file an opposition (이의신청, uisincheong) within two months under Article 60. If none succeeds, the applicant pays the registration fee and the mark is registered for ten years from the registration date under Article 83, renewable for further ten-year periods.

What it costs

Official fees are modest: an application fee and a registration fee per class, each in the tens to low hundreds of thousands of won, lower for electronic filings with standard descriptions. The larger cost is the attorney’s fee for filing and for responding to any office action. A straightforward word mark in one or two classes, filed directly, usually costs a few hundred to around a thousand US dollars in total from filing to registration; a Madrid designation costs the WIPO individual fee for Korea plus local fees if an objection arises. Against the cost of buying back a mark or rebranding in Korea, it is small.

When someone has filed first

If a third party has applied for or registered your brand in Korea, the options depend on timing and evidence:

• Pending application: file evidence with the examiner (an information offer) or, after publication, an opposition within two months. Grounds include bad faith, conflict with your earlier application, and the agent-relationship rule.
• Registered mark: file an invalidation trial (무효심판, muhyo simpan) before the Intellectual Property Trial and Appeal Board under Article 117. Some grounds, including bad faith, can be raised at any time; others must be raised within five years of registration.
• Mark registered but not used: file a non-use cancellation (불사용취소심판, bulsayong chwiso simpan) under Article 119 if the owner has not used it in Korea for three consecutive years.
• Negotiation: many squatters will assign the mark for a price. Paying may be faster than litigating, but it rewards the practice; decide with evidence of the cost of each route.
• Unfair competition: where the copyist uses a mark well known in Korea, the Unfair Competition Prevention Act may give a separate claim.

Evidence wins these cases: dated proof of your use and reputation, of the squatter’s knowledge — correspondence, distribution agreements, trade fair records — and of any pattern of copying other brands. Start collecting it the day you discover the filing.

Distributors and agents

Most Korean trademark disputes involving foreign brands start with a business partner. Prevent them in the contract: the distributor acknowledges that the brand belongs to you, agrees not to file it or anything similar in Korea, assigns to you any registration it has made, and uses the mark only under licence. Record exclusive licences with KIPO if you want them effective against third parties. And file your own registration before signing — a contract claim against a distributor is weaker protection than a registration in your own name.

Keeping the registration alive

• Use it: a registration not used in Korea for three consecutive years is vulnerable to cancellation. Use by a licensee counts if properly authorised.
• Renew it: renewal is filed within the year before expiry, with a six-month grace period on payment of a surcharge.
• Record changes: a change of owner’s name, an assignment or a licence should be recorded with KIPO.
• Watch the register: a watch service flags new Korean applications similar to your mark, so you can oppose within the two-month window.
• Customs: registered owners can record their marks with the Korea Customs Service so that counterfeits are stopped at the border.

Domain names and marketplace names

A .kr domain name is a separate registration with its own rules, administered by the Korea Internet & Security Agency; register yours early. Korean marketplaces and app stores also run brand-protection programmes that rely on a Korean registration: without one, removing copycat listings is slow; with one, it is routine. Our guide to e-commerce in Korea covers marketplace onboarding.

Trademarks and your Korean company

The trademark is usually owned by the foreign parent and licensed to the Korean subsidiary for a royalty. The royalty is deductible in Korea if priced at arm’s length and bears Korean withholding, reduced by the applicable tax treaty — 10% under the Italy and Spain treaties, for example. Our guides to withholding by country and to the Italy–Korea treaty cover the rates. A Korean company that will own its own brand — a local product line, a Korean-only name — registers it in its own name like any Korean business.

Choosing the Korean form of your brand

A foreign brand has three possible Korean faces: the original Latin letters, a transliteration (음역, eumyeok) in Hangul that reproduces the sound, and occasionally a translation (의역, uiyeok) that renders the meaning. Most brands use the first two together. The transliteration is not always obvious — Korean has no f, v or z, and several English vowels map to more than one Hangul spelling — so the same name can be written in two or three ways. Choose the one Korean customers and media actually use, check that it means nothing unfortunate, and register it. If a second spelling is common, register that too.

Korean examiners assess similarity by appearance, sound and meaning. A Latin mark and its Hangul transliteration are usually treated as similar, which helps you object to a copyist’s Hangul filing — but relying on that argument is weaker than owning the registration.

A trademark is not a company name

Registering a Korean company under a name does not give trademark rights in it. The trade name (상호, sangho) of a company is registered with the court under the Commercial Act, which only stops another company registering an identical trade name for the same business in the same city. It does not stop someone registering the brand as a trademark, and a trademark owner can in some cases object to a company’s use of a confusingly similar trade name. Register both: the company name with the court at incorporation, the brand with KIPO before launch.

Enforcing a registered mark

Once registered, the owner can act against infringers. The usual sequence is a warning letter from a Korean attorney, which resolves most cases with small copyists and marketplace sellers. If not, the owner can seek a preliminary injunction (가처분, gacheobun) and sue for an injunction and damages under Articles 107 and 109 of the Trademark Act. Korean law presumes damages from the infringer’s profits or a reasonable royalty, allows statutory damages in place of proof of loss, and since 2020 allows enhanced damages of up to three times the loss for wilful infringement. Trademark infringement is also a criminal offence under Article 230, and the Korean Intellectual Property Office runs a special judicial police unit for counterfeits.

Marketplaces, app stores and social platforms remove infringing listings on notice from a registered owner, usually within days. Customs recordation lets the Korea Customs Service detain counterfeit imports at the border. None of these tools is available, or available quickly, without a Korean registration.

Patents, designs and copyright

Trademarks protect names and logos. A distinctive product shape or packaging can be protected as a registered design (디자인, dijain) under the Design Protection Act, which Korean courts enforce actively against copies; designs must be new, so file before the product is shown publicly or within the grace period. Inventions need patents, filed in Korea directly or through the PCT within the priority deadlines. Copyright in software, text and images arises without registration, though registration with the Korea Copyright Commission helps as evidence. A foreign brand entering Korea usually needs trademarks first, designs second, and patents only where it has inventions to protect.

Filing strategy for a launch across Asia

Brands entering several Asian markets at once face the same first-to-file logic in China, Japan, Taiwan and much of Southeast Asia. A sensible sequence is to file in the home country, then within the six-month priority window file directly in the markets with the highest copying risk — Korea and China usually among them — and use a Madrid designation for the rest. Translate and transliterate the brand market by market: the Hangul version for Korea, a Chinese-character version for China and Taiwan, katakana for Japan. Budget for one round of office actions in each country, and set up a watch service covering all of them from the day of filing.

Timing matters more than completeness. A filing in the core classes before any public announcement, fair or distributor negotiation is worth more than a perfect specification filed after the brand is already known in the market.

A worked example

A Danish homeware brand, sold in Korea through a distributor for two years, decides to open its own Korean company. Before telling the distributor, it searches KIPRIS and finds that the distributor filed the brand in Class 21 eighteen months earlier. Its Korean attorney files an opposition — too late, the mark is registered — and then an invalidation action relying on the agent-relationship ground, with the distribution agreement, correspondence and the brand’s European registrations as evidence. Meanwhile the brand files its own applications in Latin letters and Hangul in Classes 20, 21 and 35. The invalidation succeeds after fourteen months; the brand’s own marks register shortly after. The cost of the dispute is many times what a filing before the first shipment would have cost, and the Korean launch is delayed by a year.

Mistakes we see

1. Exhibiting, advertising or appointing a distributor before filing.
2. Filing in the distributor’s or subsidiary’s name instead of the brand owner’s.
3. Latin mark only, leaving the Hangul version open.
4. Missing Class 35 for retail and online sales.
5. International goods descriptions not adapted to Korean practice, causing objections.
6. Letting the two-month opposition window pass on a copycat application.
7. Registering and never using the mark in Korea, inviting a non-use cancellation.

Korean terms you will meet

Questions readers ask

About the author

Alexander Baranov

Founder of the BCA Group · cross-border corporate and tax adviser since 2008

Alexander advises foreign founders and groups on company formation, tax structuring and corporate law in more than 40 jurisdictions across Europe, the Gulf, Asia and Latin America. He is the author of nine books on international business and tax and writes regularly for professional finance and tax journals. He works in English, German, Spanish and Russian.

This guide is based on the Korean statutes cited in the text and on our own filings. It is reviewed when the law or official rates change.

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