Skip to content

KIPO Korea (KR) — national
Layer national
Jurisdiction KR (WIPO ST.3: KR)
Issuing body Korean Intellectual Property Office (특허청 / Korean: T'eukheoch'eong)
Rights administered patent, utility_model, trademark, design
Working languages Korean (primary); English (partial — KIPRIS English UI, KPA machine-translated abstracts)
Connector status planned (BYOK architecture)
Last verified 2026-05-16
Manifest entry not yet listed in coverage/sources.yaml

Detail surveys:

Higher layers covering this office transitively:

  • EPO INPADOC (via regional/epo.md) — KR patent biblio + family; legal events coverage depends on whether KR is in INPADOC's ~50-office legal-events subset (verify per query)
  • WIPO PATENTSCOPE — PCT applications filed at KIPO as receiving office; PCT applications designating KR as their national-phase target
  • WIPO Madrid — international TMs designating KR (KR is a Madrid member); national-only KR TMs are NOT in Madrid
  • WIPO Hague — international designs designating KR (KR joined the Hague System 2014-07-01); national-only KR designs are NOT in Hague

Rating: 🟡 Yellow — BYOK

KIPRIS Plus API real and clean; ToS §11 forbids key sharing → BYOK only Jump to access details → View on the atlas →

§1 Mission

KIPO is one of the IP5 offices — the five largest patent offices that collectively handle ~80% of global patent applications (USPTO, EPO, JPO, KIPO, CNIPA). KIPO administers all four traditional Korean registered IP rights from one agency, and the underlying online search system (KIPRIS) is operated by a sister agency (Korea Institute of Patent Information, KIPI). Korea is a top global jurisdiction for utility model filings — a distinct right type from patents that KIPO administers alongside its patent register.

For agents working on Korean prior art, ownership, prosecution, or post-grant review, KIPO is the authoritative source. EPO INPADOC substitutes for KR patent biblio + family at the regional layer, but prosecution depth, native-language full text, utility models, and trademark/design data are only available directly from KIPO.

§2 What's unique here

  • Korean-language full text of patents and utility models (EPO OPS full text covers ~30 collections; KR patent full text typically lives in KIPRIS only).
  • Real-time KR patent prosecution status (vs. INPADOC's lag).
  • Utility models — Korea is a major UM jurisdiction; UMs are a distinct right not covered by EP-only systems.
  • National-only KR trademarks — Madrid IRs designating KR are visible via Madrid, but pure KR-only filings live only in KIPO.
  • National KR designs not filed via Hague — pre-2014 designs and post-2014 national-only filings live only in KIPO.
  • IPTAB decisions (Korean Intellectual Property Trial and Appeal Board) — Korea's post-grant tribunal; analogous to USPTO PTAB.
  • Machine-translated English abstracts (KPA) — a separate KIPRIS Plus dataset for non-Korean readers.

§3 Programmatic surfaces

KIPRIS Plus REST API

Field Value
Endpoint http://kipo-api.kipi.or.kr/openapi/service/{patUtliInfoSearchService,trademarkInfoSearchService,designInfoSearchService}/{getWordSearch,getAdvancedSearch,…}
Auth Per-user API key (one key per member account) — passed as serviceKey query parameter
Format XML only (no JSON variant on the English portal)
Rate limit Two tiers (Development — free quota; Operation — paid, "carefully reviewed and approved on a limited basis"). See the KIPRIS Plus terms for the current quota and price.
ToS posture Per-user only — §11 forbids sharing Authentication Keys with others
Verdict (zero-infra proxy) 🟡 Yellow — BYOK architecture viable; shared-key proxy is ToS-prohibited
Primary sources Service Introduction (EN) · Terms of use (EN) §11 · Patent-Utility doc page (EN)

The API itself is technically excellent: REST with getWordSearch (free-text) and getAdvancedSearch (structured) operations for each right; ~46 OpenAPI services per the 2019 KIPRIS leaflet (PDF); 1948-onward backfile per WIPO Inspire. The blocker is purely contractual — ToS §11 forbids one-key-many-users.

data.go.kr mirror

The same KIPRIS endpoints are also listed on Korea's national open data portal data.go.kr with English UI:

Alternate registration path if KIPRIS Plus signup blocks on Korean identity verification (i-PIN / KR mobile carrier). Whether data.go.kr registration succeeds without a Korean phone is not confirmed by primary source (wave research §2).

KIPRIS web UI scraping

Not recommended — the public KIPRIS UI is anti-scrape-protected and the API path above is the supported method. Verdict: 🔴 red.

K-PION (B2B office portal)

Inter-office only (not available to private developers per the existing detail survey connectors/kipo.md). Verdict: 🔴 red.

§4 Fees

KIPO charges in KRW across patent, utility model, design, and trade mark — filing, search, examination, grant, and renewal categories, with discount tiers for small entities and individual applicants. KIPRIS Plus API access has its own separate fee structure (development tier vs. operation tier).

§5 Access via patent-client-agents

What we cover today

Nothing yet — KIPO is not in coverage/sources.yaml as of 2026-05-16. KR patent biblio + family is currently accessed transitively via patent_client_agents.epo_ops.

What we should add

Connector: patent_client_agents.kipo_kipris (planned, BYOK) — see BACKLOG.md original entry "Tier 1 Rank 9-10". Reconciled architecture: env-gated per-user keys, mirroring the JPO / EUIPO / IP Australia pattern.

Tools to surface (initial scope):

  • search_kipo_patents(query, ...) — KIPRIS Plus patent-utility word/advanced search
  • get_kipo_patent(application_or_publication_number) — bibliographic + drawing access
  • search_kipo_trademarks(query, ...) — trademark word/advanced search
  • get_kipo_trademark(application_or_registration_number) — bibliographic + Vienna-class lookup
  • search_kipo_designs(query, ...) — design word/advanced search
  • get_kipo_design(application_or_registration_number) — bibliographic + drawing access

Auth model:

  • Env var: KIPO_KIPRIS_API_KEY — supplied per deployment / per end user
  • Tool registration gated on env var presence (CONNECTOR_STANDARDS.md §7.x pattern, already used for JPO_API_USERNAME/PASSWORD and IPAUSTRALIA_CLIENT_ID/SECRET)
  • On the hosted demo (mcp.patentclient.com) the KIPO tools simply don't register without a key — honest and ToS-clean

Next steps

  1. Verify foreign-developer signup path: register at KIPRIS Plus EN portal and data.go.kr to confirm whether Korean phone / i-PIN is mandatory. Cite kiprisplus@kipi.or.kr as the documented manual workaround.
  2. Once a working serviceKey is obtained, smoke-test patUtliInfoSearchService/getWordSearch, trademarkInfoSearchService/getWordSearch, designInfoSearchService/getWordSearch to confirm the XML response shape.
  3. Design patent_client_agents.kipo_kipris package per the JPO connector pattern (patent_client_agents.jpo is the closest existing template — BYOK + XML response parsing).

§6 Known unknowns

  • Foreign-developer signup path. Does data.go.kr registration succeed without a Korean phone? Primary source ambiguous (Terms of use §5).
  • Operation-tier approval criteria. What does "carefully reviewed and approved on a limited basis" mean in practice? Lead time? Conditions?
  • Redistribution beyond per-user proxy. Does serving KIPRIS data via our MCP tool (even with BYOK) trigger ToS §11's redistribution language? Legal review recommended before any cache-and-serve pattern.
  • JSON variant. Is JSON output available on operation tier or only XML?
  • Total document count. No primary-source quote for current totals — relevant for capacity planning.

§7 References

Primary sources only.

Portals + docs:

Terms + service introduction:

API documentation:

WIPO context:

Detail survey (older, pre-2026-05-16):

Last updated 2026-05-16.