What can we learn from Korean appeal statistics?

"Trends and Prospects of Recent Trials Before the Korean Intellectual Property Tribunal", by Hyung Geun Ji and Gregory B. Kang (Kim & Chang) gives some interesting insights into how South Korea's bifurcated judicial system operates. The data, according to the authors, with both fewer appeals being filed against the Intellectual Property Tribunal (IPT) and a higher proportion of appeals being dismissed, suggests that the IPT's decisions must be getting better.  As their article states:

... as shown in Table 3 below, the rate of appealing the IPT decisions to the Patent Court has a decreasing trend with 15.2% in 2009. In the meantime, the rate of the Patent Court reversing the IPT decisions more or less decreased to 23.6% in 2009 compared to 24.7% during the recent five years. KIPO concluded that this is due to quality enhancement of the IPT decisions.

As shown in Table 4 below, the rate of appealing the Patent Court decisions to the Supreme Court has no significant changes during the recent five years. Further, the rate of the Supreme Court reversing the Patent Court decisions more or less decreased to 9.7% in 2009 compared to 10.6% during the recent five years.

According to the above statistics, it can be noted that the reliability of the IPT decisions has been gradually increasing and the rate of the Supreme Court reversing the Patent Court decisions is also no more than 10% or so. In view of the foregoing, it may be concluded that parties handling court trials or IPT actions in Korea should make full preparations from the IPT stage which is the first stage of review.

Source: Kim & Chang Newsletter