Trademark registration in Korea goes to whoever files first. A brand with twenty years of sales abroad and no Korean filing has very little to assert against a Korean applicant who files the same mark tomorrow. The filing itself is cheap and examination takes about a year. What carries the money is when you file, and most foreign brands file too late.
This guide covers the executive layer: timing, squatting exposure, script choice, filing route, and the use requirement. It sits alongside the guide to how to start a business in South Korea, because the trademark decision usually arrives before the entity does and should not wait for it. Every provision below was read on law.go.kr in September 2026 and is cited by article.
What Does First-to-File Actually Mean for a Brand Already Selling Abroad?
It means your foreign sales history is close to irrelevant to who owns the mark in Korea. It keeps one job, which the squatting section below develops: foreign reputation is the evidence that defeats a bad-faith filer, even though it creates no Korean right on its own. Article 35(1) of the Trademark Act (상표법, Act No. 21134, in force 11 November 2025) gives registration to the earlier applicant where two applications cover identical or similar marks on identical or similar goods, and Article 82(1) makes the right arise on registration.
Two provisions soften this, and neither is likely to help a brand that has not sold in Korea. Article 46 lets a Paris Convention applicant claim the home filing date, but only if the Korean application follows within six months, with certified home documents filed within three months of the Korean filing. That window closes quietly while a company debates its Korea plan.
Article 99 lets a prior user keep using a mark despite someone else’s registration, on strict conditions: continuous use in Korea before the other party’s filing, without unfair competition purpose, and recognition among Korean consumers as indicating one party’s goods at the moment that other party filed. A distributor’s first container and an English website do not clear that bar. Article 99 also grants no right to exclude anyone, so it works only as a shield against an infringement claim.
Article 6 requires a person with no address or business office in Korea to act through a Korean trademark administrator (상표관리인), so a foreign company without a Korean entity files through a Korean patent attorney. If a Korean subsidiary files instead, the subsidiary owns the mark, a group asset question worth settling before the application.
Who Handles Trademark Registration in Korea, and What Does It Cost?
Applications go to the Ministry of Intellectual Property (지식재산처, MOIP), which operated as the Korean Intellectual Property Office until its elevation to ministry status on 1 October 2025. It still publishes at kipo.go.kr, and search practitioners still say KIPO.
Official fees come from the Regulation on the Collection of Patent Fees (특허료 등의 징수규칙, in force 27 February 2026). Article 5(1) charges KRW 52,000 per class to file electronically, or KRW 46,000 per class where every designated good is taken from the list of product names the office publishes, which is the cheapest decision in the process and also removes a common ground for an office action. Registration is billed after allowance at KRW 201,000 per class for the ten-year term, or two installments of KRW 122,000, under MOIP’s English fee schedule in effect since 1 August 2023.
A single-class registration therefore runs about KRW 253,000 in official fees, roughly USD 190 at the Federal Reserve H.10 rate of 1,346.51 won to the dollar on 4 September 2026. Treat that as a floor rather than a budget: a foreign applicant with no Korean address acts through a Korean representative whose fee is separate, quoted per case, and the part you actually negotiate. Both together stay far below the recovery route priced in the squatting section below.
Article 83(3) carries the trap in the installment option, because where the second installment goes unpaid the ten-year term collapses to five. Splitting the fee saves KRW 79,000 today and creates a diary entry that a departing brand manager takes with them.
How Long Does It Take, and What Happens Along the Way?
Plan on roughly a year to first examination and longer to registration. Korea’s government indicator service reports average trademark first-action pendency, measured from filing to the examiner’s first notice, at 11.9 months in 2025 and 12.6 months in 2024.
If the examiner finds a ground for refusal, Article 55(1) requires notice first, and Article 50(2) of the Enforcement Rule gives up to two months, as fixed by the examiner, to answer it. Where no ground is found, Article 57 publishes the application and Article 60(1) allows anyone to oppose within 30 days of publication, shortened from two months for applications published on or after 22 July 2025, so reset any watch service to the shorter clock.
Article 53(2) and Article 12 of the Enforcement Decree allow accelerated examination for an applicant already using the mark on all designated goods or clearly preparing to, and for one who has sent or received a written warning under Article 58(1) about the application. The fee is KRW 160,000 per class, and a company that has discovered a conflicting local filing usually qualifies on the warning ground. The term is ten years from registration under Article 83(1), renewable in ten-year increments.
Should You File the Korean-Script Version of Your Brand?
Usually yes, and as a separate application filed at the same time. Korean consumers, search engines, and marketplaces handle a foreign brand in its hangul transliteration, and the transliteration you do not file is the one left available.
MOIP’s Trademark Examination Guidelines (예규 제5호, in force 10 December 2025) devote a chapter to foreign-language marks. Its stated principle is that a mark in a foreign language is examined by transliterating or translating it into Korean and testing the Korean result against each provision of the Act, judged by whether traders and consumers would perceive that transliterated or translated meaning. Examination therefore already reads your Latin mark in Korean sound, which makes your Latin registration citable against a later hangul application for the same goods. It stops working when the squatter picks a transliteration an examiner would not derive from your mark, and that gap is what a separate hangul registration closes.
The reason to file both at once is procedural. The same Guidelines treat converting a foreign-language mark into its hangul transliteration, or adding the hangul alongside it, as a material change to the application (요지변경). You cannot fix the omission later by amending the pending application. A Madrid designation is more rigid still, because the mark must match the basic registration.
Transliteration also binds you, because the rendering you register is the one you own. Start from the loanword orthography standard (외래어 표기법, Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism Notice 2017-14, in force 28 March 2017), which fixes the default hangul a Korean reader derives from a foreign name, writing it with the 24 standard letters and avoiding tense consonants for the plosives. The fifth item of its first chapter (제5항) then defers to established usage where a form has already settled, and any brand with a Korean following has one. So check the default against what Korean buyers actually type, using the method in the guide to Korean keyword localization, and settle the form with the people who will market the brand. File the one you will use. Alternative renderings filed defensively and never used are cancellable at three years by anyone, under the rule below, so the rest is a monitoring problem rather than a filing problem: set a watch on them.
What Recourse Exists Against a Trademark Squatter?
More than the first-to-file rule suggests, and it depends entirely on which ground fits your facts. Three provisions of Article 34(1) address bad-faith filings, and they bind different people.
Subparagraph 13 covers a mark identical or similar to one recognised among consumers in Korea or abroad as indicating a particular party’s goods, filed for an improper purpose such as unfair gain or causing that party loss. Subparagraph 20 covers an applicant who knew the mark through a partnership, employment, or business relationship and filed it anyway. Subparagraph 21 covers a mark registered in a treaty country, filed without consent by someone who is or was in such a relationship with the rightholder. A distributor who registers your mark falls under 20 where the case rests on the relationship and its knowledge of your mark, and under 21 where you already hold a registration in a treaty country, which 21 requires and 20 does not. An unconnected broker falls under 13 or nowhere.
Subparagraph 13 is the one provision that reads on reputation built outside Korea, so the foreign trading history that buys you nothing on ownership is the asset that carries this case. The Examination Guidelines put the recognition threshold at a meaningful minimum range of people in the trade knowing the mark as one party’s, and state that the foreign consumers who know it need not sit in more than one country. Recognition is judged on the period, manner and area of use, the trading range, sales volume, and advertising, so the file to assemble is a dated one: years of use by country and channel, unit and revenue figures, advertising and campaigns, and press coverage. The Guidelines also allow improper purpose to be inferred from the applicant’s own past and present filing and registration history, which is why a broker sitting on a portfolio of other people’s brands is the easier case to run.
Timing works in your favour on these three. Article 34(2) assesses subparagraphs 11, 13, 14, 20, and 21 as at the squatter’s filing date, so the evidence to preserve is what your brand looked like then. Article 122(1) bars invalidation trials after five years from registration only for the grounds it lists, which include subparagraphs 6 to 10 and 16 and Article 35, and the bad-faith grounds are absent from that list, so an invalidation built on subparagraph 13, 20, or 21 is not time-barred, and Article 117(2) allows it even after the right has lapsed. Subparagraph 9 sits inside the barred range. Counsel reach for 9 because it asks only whether the mark was already widely recognised among Korean consumers for the same kind of goods, with no need to prove the squatter’s purpose or any relationship, and the Guidelines set its recognition bar well above subparagraph 13’s. Choosing the ground is choosing the deadline.
Standing differs too. Article 117(1) limits invalidation trials to an interested party or an examiner, unlike the cancellation route below. The Supreme Court reads an interested party as one who has used or is using a mark identical or similar to the registered one and so holds a direct interest in seeing that registration extinguished (Supreme Court 2002후1256, 2004, decided on the predecessor invalidation provision, which used the same term), and the interest is judged as at the decision rather than the request under MOIP’s published trial practice. Outside the Act, Article 2(1)(사) of the Unfair Competition Prevention Act reaches an agent or representative, or someone who held that role within the past year, who uses a mark registered in a Paris Convention, WTO, or Trademark Law Treaty country without justification. MOIP also runs a public reporting channel for malicious trademark pre-emption and operates intellectual property special judicial police.
Check the registration’s age before choosing a ground. A squatter’s mark registered more than three years ago and never used is attacked more cheaply through non-use cancellation, covered below, where anyone can file without showing an interest and the registrant carries the burden of proving use. Invalidation is the route where the registration is younger than three years or the squatter has put the mark to real use. Either way, budget the time: Korea’s government indicator service puts average processing at the Intellectual Property Trial and Appeal Board at 8.1 months for trademark and design cases in 2025 and 7.2 months in 2024, measured from the request to the written decision, and an appeal to the Patent Court runs on top of that. The registration stands while it all runs.
Once the mark is yours, record it with the Korea Customs Service. Article 235 of the Customs Act bars the import or export of goods infringing a trademark right registered under the Trademark Act, and lets the Commissioner of the Korea Customs Service take recordations of those rights. Customs then notifies the recorded owner when a suspect consignment is declared for import, export, transshipment, or bonded movement, and the owner can provide security and request suspension of clearance. Under the Customs Service notice on import and export clearance for intellectual property protection (관세청 고시 제2026-31호, in force 14 April 2026), read with Article 288(10) of the Customs Act Enforcement Decree, intake of these recordations is delegated to the Trade Related IPR Protection Association (사단법인 무역관련지식재산권보호협회, TIPA), which takes the filing on paper or as an electronic filing through the customs electronic clearance system at unipass.customs.go.kr. A recordation runs for ten years, or to the end of the right where that falls sooner, and renewal must be requested no earlier than one year and no later than ten days before expiry. A registered mark is the entry ticket.
Can You Lose a Korean Trademark for Not Using It?
Korea does not ask for proof of use to register, and it takes the mark away if you never use it. Article 119(1)3 allows cancellation where neither the owner nor any licensee has used the registered mark on the designated goods in Korea for three continuous years before the trial request, absent a justified reason.
The mechanics favour the challenger. Article 119(3) puts the burden on the registrant to prove use of at least one of the goods at issue within those three years, Article 119(5) lets anyone file without showing an interest, a change made by the 2016 overhaul of the Act, and cancellation can be aimed at part of a specification, taking effect from the date the request was filed.
That makes non-use cancellation the standard tool against a dormant blocking registration, including a squatter’s, because a mark registered to be sold is rarely a mark in use. Article 34(3) then bars the former owner from re-registering the same mark on the same or similar goods for three years, and that bar binds the registrant and users of its mark, not the party that brought the cancellation.
It cuts both ways. Your own registration needs documented use: dated Korean invoices, packaging, and advertising tied to the registered form of the mark and to the specific goods. Filing a wide specification of goods you never sell buys a registration that a competitor can trim.
What to Do This Quarter
Run a clearance search before anything else. KIPRIS, the free public database, covers Korean applications and registrations, and it splits into two jobs. The Latin-spelling search you can run yourself as a first screen, in an afternoon. The hangul transliterations and phonetic neighbours need a Korean speaker or Korean counsel, and that is the half that turns up the filing which blocks you.
Then set the class count, which prices everything above and sets your exposure below. Every official fee is charged per class, and every class you cannot evidence use in is a class a competitor can strip at three years. File the classes carrying products you will ship inside three years, and leave the aspirational ones out.
Then decide the route. For Korea alone, a direct national filing is cheaper: the Madrid route adds WIPO’s basic fee of 653 Swiss francs for a black and white mark, or 903 in colour, on top of an individual fee for Korea of 150 francs per class on designation, the amount listed on WIPO’s individual fee schedule as it stood in September 2026. Madrid earns its cost across a group of countries, and Korea has been a Protocol member since 10 April 2003, one of 117 members covering 133 countries. The dependency is the catch, because the Protocol ties the international registration to the basic mark for its first five years under Article 6(3), and Article 202 lapses the Korean right when that international registration is cancelled.
Then file, in both scripts, before the distributor conversation rather than after it. If Korea is not a market you intend to serve within three years, a clean decision not to file, revisited annually, beats a registration you cannot support with use. Partner selection sits next to this decision and is covered in the guide to finding a business partner in Korea, and the agreement that follows in the guide to Korean contract law.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need to use my trademark in Korea before registering it? No. Korea registers on application, and use is not a filing requirement. Use becomes decisive afterwards. Under Article 119(1)3 of the Trademark Act, a registration can be cancelled where the mark has not been used in Korea for three continuous years before the request, and Article 119(3) puts the burden of proving use on the registrant.
Can I recover a trademark a Korean distributor registered in its own name? Often, by one of two routes. Article 34(1)20 and 21 cover applications by parties who knew the mark through a business relationship, and Article 122(1) does not time-bar those grounds, so the five-year limit that applies to other grounds does not close the door. Where the registration is more than three years old and unused, non-use cancellation under Article 119(1)3 is usually the cheaper attack.
How much does trademark registration in Korea cost? The official fees for one class are KRW 52,000 to file electronically and KRW 201,000 to register for ten years, per the fee regulation and MOIP’s published schedule. Using only the officially listed product names cuts the filing fee to KRW 46,000. Attorney fees are separate, and a foreign applicant without a Korean address must act through a Korean representative.
How long does the process take? Expect around a year to the examiner’s first action. Korea’s government indicator service puts average trademark first-action pendency at 11.9 months in 2025. After allowance, publication opens a 30-day opposition window, shortened from two months on 22 July 2025, and the registration fee follows. Accelerated examination is available to qualifying applicants for KRW 160,000 per class.
Filing Before It Becomes a Recovery Problem
Korean counsel should run the clearance search and the filing, and a Korean patent attorney is mandatory where the applicant has no Korean address. The decision that precedes both is commercial: which marks, in which scripts, in which classes, and how soon. Inquivix supports international companies building the Korean market presence those registrations exist to protect, and covers the tactical layer in its SEO checklist for Korean market entry. To talk through the sequencing before a distributor or launch date forces it, write to Joon K Lee at joon@joonklee.com.
