Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) held bilateral meetings with eight ASEAN member states* and Timor-Leste (as an observer) on the sidelines of the 8th ROK-ASEAN Heads of Intellectual Property Offices Meeting, from September 1 to 3, 2025 in Seoul, Republic of Korea.

* Brunei, Cambodia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Viet Nam

The delegations had an in-depth discussion on the topics of mutual interest that ranged from IP protection, IP finance to SME support, as well as on the ongoing and future bilateral cooperation.

With Singapore, KIPO signed a revised Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for reinforced cooperation, adding new areas of collaboration, such as information exchange on artificial intelligence (AI), IP finance, and valuation, to the existing areas of cooperation on capacity building, commercialization, and user outreach (industry, academia, and research institutions).

With Vietnam, Indonesia, and Cambodia, KIPO established respective work plans to implement cooperation in five key areas: IP Laws and systems, training, protection, trademarks, and awareness raising. In particular, the 'protection' agenda included sharing best practices in protection and enforcement, conducting joint crackdowns on online and offline counterfeit distribution, carrying out comparative research on protection legislation, and information exchange to prevent bad-faith trademark filings.

With Timor-Leste participating in the meeting as an observer, KIPO discussed future cooperation on the establishment of its own IP office, which is being pursued with support from the WIPO Korea Funds-in-Trust.

Source: https://www.kipo.go.kr/en/engBultnDetail.do?board_id=kiponews&cp=1&pg=1&npp=10&catmenu=ek06_01_01&seq=1806