A recent amendment to the Korean Patent Act ("KPA") extends the timeframe to seek a refund of examination fees paid to the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) for a patent application if the application is timely withdrawn or abandoned in writing (effective November 18, 2021).

Currently, examination fees can be fully refunded as long as the application is withdrawn or abandoned before any of 4 listed conditions has occurred, and there is no provision for partial refunds at all. Under the revised KPA, the withdrawal no longer needs to take place before KIPO is notified of outside prior art search results (typically the earliest condition to occur) in order to receive a full refund, and KIPO now provides for partial refunds under certain conditions even after a full refund is no longer available. Specifically, examination fees can now be partially refunded by one-third if the application is withdrawn or abandoned after KIPO issues an order for consultation to resolve double patenting issues but before the applicant is required to report the consultation results, or if the application is withdrawn or abandoned after KIPO's issuance of a first Notice of Preliminary Rejection but before the applicant's deadline to respond. The following table summarizes the relevant changes:

These revisions should allow applicants more flexibility to reconsider whether to proceed with a given application, since it is now possible to respond to a negative or unexpected prior art search result from a KIPO-designated agency by withdrawing the application (and receive a full refund of examination fees), or to withdraw after the first Notice of Preliminary Rejection and still receive a partial refund of the examination fees. In addition, when faced with an order for consultation to resolve double patenting issues, the applicant not only can select which application to pursue, but now also can receive a partial refund of examination fees for the withdrawn or abandoned application.