Received an Office Action on a patent application?

When a Korean patent office examines an incoming foreign patent application, it issues an Office Action notifying the applicant's foreign agent of the rejected claims and the grounds for rejection — and getting that translated accurately, not just quickly, affects how the applicant's response is drafted.

What an 의견제출통지서 (Office Action) is

An 의견제출통지서 is the notice a patent examiner issues asking the applicant to submit their opinion during patent examination. Korea's Patent Office uses the official English name "Notification of Reasons for Refusal", focused on communicating the grounds for rejection. In patent industry terms, any procedural action a patent office takes toward an applicant during examination is generally called an Office Action — this document is one type.

Some domestic patent firms provide a machine-translated version as a courtesy, but a professional human translation is a separate paid service, done specifically when the applicant requests it.

Information that improves translation accuracy

Office Action and specification translation quality depends heavily on client-provided context:

• Cited references — the prior art documents the examiner cited as grounds for lack of inventive step or novelty. Reviewing the original text of the cited references is necessary to translate the technical terminology accurately.
• Original specification — the original-language (or priority) application specification, so terminology stays consistent with how the invention was first described.
• Family patent information — related filings in other countries (e.g. a Japanese or Chinese family member of the same patent family), cross-checked to see how the same inventive elements were translated elsewhere, for terminology consistency across the whole family.

Why patent specification translation is genuinely difficult

Patent specifications are often written with deliberately invented, highly specific terminology — the drafting patent attorney or specification writer frequently coins original terms for a component to gain an advantageous position during examination. When that happens, no technical dictionary or specialized glossary will have the term, no matter how thorough the search. Translating it correctly requires deep understanding of the technical field to grasp the invention's actual substance and choose the most appropriate term — not just a literal rendering of the Korean phrase.

A dual-review system for technical accuracy

This office runs translation and review as a cross-checked, two-person process: a patent-specialized translator with 20 years of experience as a former patent specification writer, and a 외국어번역행정사 with 16 years of foreign IP practice, translating and reviewing each other's work. This dual-review structure is built specifically to raise both the technical accuracy and the credibility of patent translations.

Patent translation goes beyond simple language conversion — it requires comprehensive expertise spanning both technology and law.