📜 Korea KIPRIS Plus — KIPO Patents, Trademarks, Designs Search

Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) — official open-API access via KIPRIS Plus. Search Korean patents (특허), utility models (실용신안), industrial designs (디자인), and trademarks (상표) with structured JSON output, IPC / Locarno / Nice classification, applicant + inventor metadata, and direct document URLs.

KIPRIS Plus (plus.kipris.or.kr) is KIPO's official open-data partner endpoint — the source-of-record for Korean IP rights, including 4–6 months of recent filings that Google Patents has not yet indexed, plus the utility model corpus that Google Patents does not cover at all.

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⚡ What you get

Field	Description
right_type	patent / utility_model / design / trademark
application_number	KIPO application number (출원번호)
registration_number	KIPO registration number (등록번호) — null if pending
title	Korean title (발명의 명칭 / 상표명 / 디자인명)
title_english	English title when KIPO recorded a bilingual filing
abstract	Korean abstract (요약) for patents / utility models
abstract_english	English summary if available
applicant_names	Array of applicants (출원인) — Korean company names
inventor_names	Array of inventors (발명자 / 디자이너)
IPC_codes	International Patent Classification (Locarno for designs, Nice for trademarks)
application_date	Filing date (ISO YYYY-MM-DD)
publication_date	Publication / open date (공개일)
registration_date	Grant date (등록일) — null if pending
status	registered / pending
document_url	Direct link to KIPRIS document viewer
priority_filings	Cross-references to priority applications (Paris Convention)
source_url	https://plus.kipris.or.kr/

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🎯 Use cases

1. IP due diligence (M&A, licensing) — pull the complete Korean IP footprint of a target company in seconds, including pending utility models that Google Patents misses.
2. Competitor patent monitoring — schedule weekly scans of a competitor's applicant name + IPC class to surface new filings within 24 hours of KIPRIS publication.
3. Korean IP portfolio analysis — export an applicant's full patent + trademark + design portfolio for portfolio-strength scoring or IPC-class heat maps.
4. Priority filing tracking — identify Paris-Convention priorities filed in KIPO that may lead to PCT or US/EP downstream filings.
5. Trademark clearance (Korean market entry) — search Nice-class trademarks before launching a brand in Korea.

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🔑 KIPRIS Plus API token (required)

KIPRIS Plus is a token-gated open API. Per KIPRIS Plus Terms of Service §4, each user must register their own free ServiceKey — NexGenData does not (and cannot) pool tokens.

Registration is free and takes ~5 minutes:

1. Sign up at https://plus.kipris.or.kr/portal/main.do
2. Apply for the ServiceKey under "오픈API 활용신청" (Open API Application)
3. Approval is typically immediate to 1 business day
4. Copy the ServiceKey into this actor's kipris_plus_token input

The actor handles missing or invalid tokens gracefully — it returns a structured error record and exits cleanly (no crashed run, no charge for the search event).

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📊 Sample output

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🚀 How to use

Example input — Korean patent search

{
  "kipris_plus_token": "YOUR_KIPRIS_PLUS_SERVICEKEY",
  "search_type": "patent",
  "query": "리튬이온배터리",
  "applicant_filter": "LG화학",
  "date_from": "2025-01-01",
  "date_to": "2026-05-31",
  "max_records": 200
}

Example input — trademark clearance

{
  "kipris_plus_token": "YOUR_KIPRIS_PLUS_SERVICEKEY",
  "search_type": "trademark",
  "query": "NexGenData",
  "max_records": 50
}

Apify Python client

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>")
run = client.actor("nexgendata/korea-kipo-kipris-plus-patents-trademarks").call(
    run_input={
        "kipris_plus_token": "YOUR_KIPRIS_PLUS_SERVICEKEY",
        "search_type": "patent",
        "query": "lithium-ion battery",
        "applicant_filter": "삼성SDI",
        "max_records": 100,
    }
)
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item["application_number"], item["title"], item["status"])

cURL

curl "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/nexgendata~korea-kipo-kipris-plus-patents-trademarks/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=$APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{
    "kipris_plus_token": "YOUR_KIPRIS_PLUS_SERVICEKEY",
    "search_type": "patent",
    "query": "리튬이온배터리",
    "max_records": 50
  }'

MCP integration

Add this actor to any MCP-compatible AI agent (Claude, GPT-4, custom LLMs) via the Apify MCP Server. The agent can then call:

"Find all KIPO patents filed by Samsung SDI on lithium-ion battery cathode materials in the last 12 months."

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한국어 설명

특허청(KIPO)의 공식 오픈데이터 파트너인 KIPRIS Plus를 통해 한국 특허, 실용신안, 디자인, 상표 정보를 구조화된 데이터로 제공합니다.

주요 용도:

• IP 듀딜리전스 (M&A, 라이선싱)
• 경쟁사 특허 모니터링
• 한국 IP 포트폴리오 분석
• 우선권 출원 추적

KIPRIS Plus ServiceKey 발급:

1. https://plus.kipris.or.kr/portal/main.do 에서 무료 가입
2. "오픈API 활용신청"에서 ServiceKey 신청 (보통 즉시~1영업일 승인)
3. 발급받은 ServiceKey를 액터의 kipris_plus_token 입력란에 입력

KIPRIS Plus 이용약관 §4에 따라 ServiceKey는 사용자별로 발급되며 공유할 수 없습니다. 이 액터는 사용자가 직접 발급받은 ServiceKey를 사용하므로 KIPRIS Plus 정책에 완전히 부합합니다.

출력 필드: 출원번호, 등록번호, 발명의 명칭(한국어), 요약, 출원인, 발명자, IPC 분류, 출원일, 공개일, 등록일, 등록 상태, KIPRIS 문서 URL, 우선권 출원 참조 정보.

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⚖️ Legal & data sources

• Source: KIPRIS Plus (https://plus.kipris.or.kr/), the Korean Intellectual Property Office's official open-API partner endpoint
• Legal basis: Korean Patent Act §193, Trademark Act §60, Design Protection Act §52 — public-disclosure mandates for granted/published IP rights
• License: Public domain (open government data); KIPRIS Plus ToS requires source attribution which is included automatically in the source_url field of every record
• Token policy: Per KIPRIS Plus ToS §4, ServiceKeys are issued per user and may not be pooled. This actor takes the user's own ServiceKey as input — no shared tokens.
• Polite-bot UA: All upstream requests use NexGenDataBot/1.0 + From: header with contact email
• Routing: All traffic is routed via plus.kipris.or.kr (KIPRIS Plus). The legacy www.kipris.or.kr endpoint rejects datacenter TLS due to Korean-domestic CA expectations and is not used.

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❓ FAQ

Q: Why do I need to bring my own KIPRIS Plus token? A: KIPRIS Plus ToS §4 explicitly requires per-user ServiceKeys and prohibits pooling. Registration is free and approval is typically immediate to 1 business day.

Q: How does this compare to Google Patents? A: KIPRIS Plus is the source-of-record for Korean IP. Google Patents has a 4–6 month indexing lag on Korean filings and does not cover Korean utility models (실용신안) at all. For Korean IP due diligence, KIPRIS Plus is the only authoritative source.

Q: What's the difference between a patent and a utility model in Korea? A: Utility models (실용신안) cover incremental functional improvements; patents (특허) require non-obvious inventive step. Utility models are common in Korean manufacturing and consumer electronics — and they're invisible to Google Patents.

Q: How are priority filings handled? A: When KIPRIS Plus exposes a priority application reference (Paris Convention §4), it's included in the priority_filings array with the priority number and date. This enables cross-jurisdiction joins to JPO, USPTO, EPO, and WIPO PCT records.

Q: Why is title_english sometimes null? A: KIPO only records bilingual titles when the applicant submitted one (more common for foreign filings under Paris Convention or PCT national-phase entry). Domestic Korean-only filings ship with Korean title only.

Q: What happens if my KIPRIS Plus token is invalid or rate-limited? A: The actor pushes a structured error record (_error: "kipris_plus_api_error", _error_code, _error_message) to the dataset and exits cleanly with no crash. No ip-record charges are applied if no rows are returned.

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🔗 Related Actors

Use these alongside KIPRIS Plus for cross-jurisdiction IP intelligence:

Actor	Coverage
USPTO Patent Search	US patents — claims, prior art
EUIPO Trademark Search	EU trademarks — TMview & eSearch
WIPO PATENTSCOPE Search	PCT international applications
Trademark Search (USPTO)	US trademark database lookup

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🏷️ About NexGenData

NexGenData builds production-grade, source-of-record Apify actors for regulatory, financial, and IP data. Browse the full catalog at apify.com/nexgendata.