SEOUL, Korea, Jan 16 (Korea Bizwire) - The Korean Intellectual Property Office said on January 15 that its DesignMap, a portal on design copyrights, has seen an increase of 36 percent in visitor numbers to 1.9 million last year. Comparing to 2009, the first year of the service, this is a 582-percent growth.
DesignMap, a website created by the government agency to help small enterprises and individual design professionals in design patent applications and patent disputes, went through a major overhaul last year toward more customized and user-friendly services.
It also shares data with “Design DB” (www.designdb.com), the design portal run by the Korea Institute of Design Promotion, while providing real-time information on design rights through Facebook and Twitter.
An official at the Korea Intellectual Property Protection Association said, “In a situation where design copyrights become an important issue as can be seen in the case of a dispute between Samsung and Apple, DesignMap is contributing a lot to raising our awareness on the issue.”
Kim Young-min, commissioner of the Korean Intellectual Property Office, said, “Our office will do everything we can to improve accessibility of design information to the general public.”
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