As the fund will be managed by professional venture capital firms, it is more likely to be successful than before when each fund was on its own. (image: TechCocktail/flickr)
SEOUL, June 3 (Korea Bizwire) – The Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO), in collaboration with universities, will create a 10-billion-won fund to give support to start-up companies that take advantage of patents held by the universities. To this end, the patent office will chip in 80 percent of the fund, or 8 billion won.
University-based technology holding companies that were created to commercialize patented technologies applied by university scientists and engineers have had difficulties in making profits until now. The main reason for the patent office to create the fund was to help the technology holding companies by pooling financial resources so that each university tech holding company can make investment in patent-using companies to the extent of its investment share.
As the fund will be managed by professional venture capital firms, it is more likely to be successful than before when each fund was on its own. The fund is bound by law to invest more than 70 percent of the amount in firms using university-generated patents. In addition, some of the fund will be used to encourage young student entrepreneurs who establish business ventures based on patented technologies.
Kim Young-min, head administrator of the Korean Intellectual Property Office, said, “I hope the new fund could help out the new university-based start-ups and small businesses to contribute to encourage investments using patented technologies.”
Written by Robin Koo (linguistkoo@koreabizwire.com)
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