Hyundai Mobis filed more patents overseas than in Korea last year

Cho Sung-hwan, president and chief executive officer of Hyundai Mobis [Photo provided by Hyundai Mobis]

Hyundai Mobis Co. filed nearly 3,000 patents last year with more than half of them applied overseas, the first time the Korean auto parts maker overseas applications outnumbers those made at home.

The company Thursday said about 51 percent of some 2,900 patents filed last year came from overseas. The new milestone was achieved under the leadership of Cho Sung-hwan, president and chief executive officer of Hyundai Mobis, who has been focusing on enhancing competitiveness by developing global standard patents.

Cho will begin his official two-year term from January 2024 as the first Korean to serve as the president of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), the world’s largest standardization organization with 167 national standard bodies as members.

A standard patent refers to original technology certified by an international standard organization. A third party must pay fees to the company holding the standard patent rights when using the technology in products or services.

Hyundai Mobis has been pushing to secure standard patents to strategically apply to protect its technologies that have potential to become international standards in the future. The other is to re-apply for existing patents as standard patents in accordance with the ISO format. The company is targeting such areas as autonomous driving, electric vehicle charging, V2X communications and high-precision location tracking systems to gain patent rights.

Hyundai Mobis also purchases patents from domestic and foreign universities, companies and research institutes. In 2021, the company purchased a patent related to wireless charging, from which royalties are accruing this year. About 70 percent of its patent applications in Korea last year are related to future mobility such as autonomous driving, electrification, urban air mobility and robotics.