Certified translation of exclusive license agreements, corporate registry excerpts, and other commercial IP documents for USPTO filings — scoped to exactly what's required, with the right translation-statement type for each filing.
Right-Sized Translation, Filed Correctly the First TimeCommercial and corporate documents headed to the USPTO come with two problems that pure language ability doesn't solve on its own: translating the document scoped correctly (not more than needed), and attaching the right kind of translation statement for what that specific USPTO filing actually requires.
A patent holder can grant a license to let someone else make, use, or sell the patented technology. Licenses come in two forms:
Korea requires an exclusive license to be registered with the patent office to take legal effect (등록주의). The US works differently — there's no mandatory registration requirement for an exclusive license, but the underlying agreement can be recorded with the USPTO (similar to a patent assignment), which puts good-faith third parties on notice that the license already exists.
What this requires in translation: consistent technical terminology, cross-review against the receiving country's legal framework, and precise, unambiguous language — a license agreement translation error can blur exactly which party holds which rights.
When a Korean company's name changes and that change needs to be reflected on a US-registered trademark, the USPTO doesn't need the full corporate registry document (등기사항전부증명서) translated — usually only the excerpt showing the name change (등기사항일부증명서) is required. Confirming the actual scope with the receiving US firm before translating avoids paying for unnecessary volume.
These two are frequently confused, and using the wrong one either fails the filing or wastes money on unnecessary certification:
| Verification of Translation | Certification of Translation | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | The translator's personal statement | A formally authoritative certification |
| Who can prepare it | Anyone — no qualification required | A certified translator (e.g. a licensed 외국어번역행정사) |
| Where it's accepted | General private submissions | Official filings — embassies, courts, government agencies |
| Liability | Liability for a false statement | Carries formal legal responsibility |
Not every USPTO filing requires a full Certification — some accept a simple Verification of Translation, and using the lighter, correct format avoids unnecessary cost without weakening the filing.
A company's Articles of Incorporation (정관) — the document governing its founding purpose, organizational structure, and operating rules — comes up for Korean-to-English translation in several business contexts beyond IP filings:
Because Articles of Incorporation carry the same weight as a company's constitution, translation demands particular care:
A representative case: a 32-page Articles of Incorporation from a Seoul law firm, requested on a Thursday evening with a Monday-morning deadline — completed across the holiday weekend as a 60-page English translation, legal accuracy intact despite the compressed timeline.
A Daejeon company requested certified translation and notarization of three documents — most likely for a foreign investor's due diligence (DD) review ahead of an investment decision. In practice, foreign investors verifying a company's structure, capital history, and business viability very commonly request exactly this 3-document baseline package.
Report on Overseas Direct Investment — proves a Korean parent company properly reported its overseas subsidiary establishment or capital investment to a foreign exchange bank. This is what establishes the legal link between headquarters and the overseas entity, showing the investor that the local subsidiary is a genuine, legally reported overseas investment with a clearly stated investment purpose and equity ratio. Translation note: company name, representative name, address, and investment purpose must match the official English spellings on the Korean corporate registry and parent company documents exactly — statutory citations follow a literal-translation principle.
Remittance (Investment) Report — confirms to the foreign exchange bank that investment funds were actually transferred and the investment completed. This is the single most important financial evidence for verifying the subsidiary's capital came from a legitimate, transparent source — proof it's not a shell company. Translation note: precision on the remittance amount and currency, the transfer date, and the transacting bank's name is critical; cross-check consistency against any attached bank documents, and use the exact official terminology financial institutions and government agencies use.
Business Plan — the document foreign investors scrutinize most closely, since it's the primary basis for the investment decision itself: business purpose and operating model, market analysis, revenue/cost structure, funding plan, use of funds, management capability, and risk factors. Translation note: match the professional, persuasive report style Anglophone investors expect, keep financial/accounting terminology consistent throughout, and preserve the original's structure, figures, and table formatting precisely.
The documents a foreign investor reviews are legal and financial evidence establishing the company's identity and the business's substance — which means the translation has to satisfy all of the following at once: complete transfer of the original meaning, official terminology standard in international investment/finance documents, faithful reproduction of the document's structure, and readability aligned to how an investor actually wants the information to flow. In practice, this makes translating for foreign submission closer to an accurate reconstruction of the document, not a language conversion. For this case, the document structure, number formatting, and official terminology were all rigorously checked against the investor's expectations before the translation and notarization were completed in a form suited for foreign submission.
A Korean innovation company selected for the Public Procurement Service (조달청)'s Innovation Product Overseas Demonstration Program needed certified translation and notarization of its Trial Use Completion Report.
PPS purchases a domestic innovation product on a trial basis and places it with an overseas public institution, which then field-tests the product and reports the real-world usage results back to both the company and PPS. This gives Korean innovation companies a genuine overseas track record — usable for further export opportunities or as a basis for product improvement aimed at overseas markets. The typical sequence: selection notification → contract execution and product preparation → on-site demonstration at the overseas public institution → results reporting and settlement → export linkage and overseas-expansion support. After the demonstration completes, the Trial Use Completion Report is written and submitted to PPS — which is where translation comes in.
For this case, the deadline was tight enough that work continued through a holiday to meet the client's schedule — the finished notarized translation ran past 100 pages, completed on time without disrupting the client's submission timeline.
Ahead of a home purchase in the Netherlands, a client needed a Korean apartment sale contract translated and certified as proof of funds. Europe — the Netherlands especially — runs a comparatively strict source-of-funds verification process, and this case had to satisfy both a Dutch notary's and a Dutch bank's requirements.
For any foreign-submission translation, confirming what kind of translation is actually needed matters more than anything else. Here, the client relayed the receiving side's own instruction directly:
"We would like to receive an English translation from the selling contract. Please let the contract translated by an official translator."
In European practice, "Official Translator" means someone granted translation authority under that country's own law — for a document originating in Korea, the only Korean qualification that fits this description is a 외국어번역행정사. That made "translation by a 외국어번역행정사 + 번역확인증명서 (Certified Translation)" the appropriate approach for this case.
This sale contract was headed to a Dutch notary reviewing it specifically for source-of-funds verification, which shaped the translation approach:
The core standard: a local notary reading this translation should have zero room for legal misreading — which is why EU/Dutch-standard administrative and real-estate terminology was used throughout, for both readability and credibility.
One clause in particular demanded special attention:
"Article 5 (Contract Rescission) — Until the buyer pays the interim payment to the seller (or the final payment, if there is no interim payment), the seller may return double the deposit, and the buyer may forfeit the deposit, to rescind this contract."
This clause implements Korean Civil Code Art. 565 — the right of rescission before performance begins, available to both parties up until the interim payment is made. The critical translation risk: this clause could easily be misread as a breach-of-contract penalty or damages provision if translated carelessly. It's neither — it's the lawful exercise of a statutory rescission right, not a contract breach, and translating it in a way that raises unnecessary legal suspicion would misrepresent the clause entirely. The translation was structured to make clear the clause doesn't presuppose any default, keeping the legal structure of this civil-law rescission right intact and unambiguous.
Following the sale contract translated for the same client's Dutch home purchase (above), this office translated and certified the companion document a Dutch notary reviews alongside it: the registry certificate (등기사항전부증명서) for the Korean apartment being sold.
In a Dutch home purchase, the notary examines not just the source of funds but scrutinizes the seller's asset's rights structure in detail — the registry certificate is the core document answering three questions: who is the actual owner (including co-ownership), do any encumbrances (like a registered mortgage) exist, and is a clean title confirmed to be deliverable at closing. Since this registry certificate needed to logically connect to the previously translated sale contract, cross-document consistency was the priority: matching address/building name/unit number across both documents, matching the seller named in the contract to the registered owner in [갑구] (Section I), confirming the logical link between the original purchase date and the current sale, matching any mortgage scheduled for cancellation in the contract against the actual [을구] (Section II) entries, and precisely cross-checking date formats, currency units, and area figures. Even one apparent mismatch between the contract and the registry can prompt the notary or bank to demand additional explanation or verification.
Korea's own official English statutes render 집합건물 as "Condominium Building." But "Condominium" carries a strong North American legal and residential connotation — a Dutch notary reading it might wonder whether the building presupposes US-style condo law, or whether it implies a luxury residential complex, raising unnecessary ambiguity. To convey the underlying legal fact — a building divided into individually owned units — without leaning on any single country's legal framework, and to let the notary grasp Korea's registry structure without preconception, this office chose the neutral term "Collective Building."
The area figures on a registry certificate aren't just size information — they identify a specific parcel, a specific building, and a specific share ratio, and serve as the basis for mortgages, sales, inheritance, and tax calculations. Since this document was headed to a Dutch notary and bank, this office kept the metric "Area" figures as recorded rather than converting to an unfamiliar unit, matching the convention EU real estate document reviewers expect. The 도면번호 (drawing number) on the certificate is also not the building's own unique identifier — it functions as an index number referencing the building's floor plan/site plan drawings within the registry system. To let a reviewer immediately and intuitively grasp that it's a lookup reference rather than a building ID, this office fixed the term as "Drawing Index Number."
Understanding the document's submission purpose and the reviewer's perspective (notary, bank officer) and designing the translation so they can grasp its content at a glance — that's the real work. This case completed both the sale contract and the registry certificate as one coordinated set, built specifically so the Dutch notary's review would proceed without friction.
Korea's Tobacco Business Act amendment expanding the legal definition of "tobacco" to include synthetic-nicotine-based products has driven a wave of inquiries from e-cigarette businesses. This office translated and certified an OEM supply contract for a business bringing a synthetic-nicotine e-cigarette product to market — submitted for tobacco import/sales business registration.
The legal definition of "tobacco" now extends to products made from synthetic nicotine as the raw material. Businesses that previously sat entirely outside tobacco regulation — anyone importing, distributing, or selling synthetic-nicotine liquid — now have to go through the same registration process as traditional tobacco businesses.
Registering a tobacco import/sales business isn't just a matter of showing "we have a product" — the administrative agency examines who actually manufactures it, what the product specifically is, and what supply structure it moves through. The OEM supply contract is the single most important document proving all of that, which is why a certified translation (or translation notarization) of it becomes central to the registration filing.
This office completed the translation and certification preserving the contract's original structure and maintaining consistent terminology throughout.
A corporate client reached out urgently needing an English translation of their shareholder registry and corporate registry certificate for a Hungarian bank. Before starting, this office asked two questions first: what is this document's ultimate submission purpose, and has the specific local certification requirement been confirmed?
The client's English company name had triggered an internal compliance review at the bank, requiring evidence establishing the company's actual substance and the nature of the transaction. In plain terms, the bank wanted to confirm the company's entity, ownership structure, and its non-connection to any specific risk — and the two documents the client initially asked to translate weren't going to be enough to fully resolve the bank's concern on their own.
Drawing on roughly 16 years of collaboration with law firms across 40+ countries and experience with international remittance and cost-processing procedures across various countries' financial institutions, this office has developed a sense for how a compliance review actually evaluates a transaction's nature and a party's substance — not just checking formal requirements box by box. In compliance review specifically, how well the submitted documents connect and corroborate each other often matters more than any single document's individual completeness.
For the capping document specifically, this office judged that a financial institution's compliance review cares about the document's format and manner of statement, not just its content. Instead of "Confirmation" — which implies a simple factual check — this office proposed a "Declaration" format, conveying that the company was formally stating a specific fact on the record and taking responsibility for it. This office also advised printing the document on the company's own official letterhead (rather than plain paper) and having it signed and sealed by the company's representative — giving it the visual and administrative credibility of a genuine company-issued document, clarifying its source and signaling the company's formal position.
What this office prioritized above all in this case was the document set's actual likelihood of being accepted. Had this office simply translated the two documents originally requested without confirming the real submission purpose, the client likely would have faced additional document requests or supplementation procedures — costing more time and money. This office's real value lies in identifying the receiving institution's actual intent, designing the optimal document set to match it, and completing translation and certification with careful, repeated verification along the way.
An employee of a major public enterprise, preparing an overseas posting to the Philippines with their family, was told by the international moving company handling their relocation that Philippine customs required a translated and notarized copy of the company's dispatch order.
Clearing household goods through customs on an international move isn't just about the shipment itself — some receiving customs authorities require the company's dispatch order or overseas-posting document to confirm the move is backed by an official assignment (formal posting status). Depending on the specific receiving customs office or moving company, the required document set can also expand to include an employment certificate, a formal appointment letter, and family relation documents.
For documents headed to the Philippines specifically, a plain English translation alone often isn't enough — translation notarization or a certified translation certificate (번역확인증명서) is frequently requested as well. Since this case's document was specifically for submission to Philippine customs, this office processed it via notarial commission (공증촉탁), preserving the official document's original format throughout. The Philippines is a Hague Apostille Convention member, but actual requirements still vary by the specific receiving customs office or moving company — some ask for a plain certified translation, others want notarization or apostille on top. Given how much the required format varies specifically for overseas relocation, extended-stay, and family-accompaniment documents, confirming the moving company's or receiving institution's exact requirement before starting is worth doing every time.
This office received the Korean-language dispatch order issued by the client's employer by email, translated the institution name, job title, and posting purpose into precise administrative/legal English so Philippine customs could read it without any risk of misunderstanding, and completed the notarized translation after the client's final review.
International relocation already comes with plenty to manage — researching customs document procedures on top of that costs real time and money. Drawing on experience across public institutions, companies, and research organizations, this office reviews the translation and notarization procedure that actually fits the destination country and submission purpose — the entire process, including this case, can be handled fully remotely for clients who can't visit in person.
More Korean companies are running into a foreign bank's KYC (Know Your Customer) document request — while setting up an overseas subsidiary, opening an overseas account, taking on foreign investment, or contracting with an overseas counterparty. KYC is a standard compliance procedure foreign banks use to confirm a company genuinely exists, who owns and controls it, what its business actually is, where its funds come from, and that the transaction carries no money-laundering or illicit-activity risk.
Depending on the specific bank, the required certification can be Certified Translation, a Certificate of Translation, notarization, apostille, or consular legalization — and the same Korean corporate document can need a different certification method depending on which bank and country it's headed to. That's exactly why this kind of KYC document set is more efficiently handled by an office that can manage both the translation and the correct certification method together, rather than a pure translation vendor.
A foreign bank's KYC compliance package is really a structural translation of Korea's administrative and corporate-registration system into the terms a foreign financial institution's legal standards recognize — an inaccurate template pulled from the internet, or a process handled without real expertise, risks delaying a company's overseas expansion timeline by months. Confirming the receiving bank's specific certification requirement before translating, the same way this office does for every cross-border submission, is what keeps a KYC package from bouncing back.
For a Korean company bidding on international tenders — the UN, U.S. federal procurement, or a multinational's global vendor process — the most common cause of disqualification isn't weak technical capability or price. It's being ruled ineligible at the document-screening stage for an incomplete or improperly certified document package. A foreign procurement review board can't directly evaluate a Korean-language document issued by a Korean government agency — it needs a complete English translation, properly certified.
A tender notice often states only "English Translation Required" — but the actual submission package can also need the translator's identity and contact information stated on the document, a Certificate of Translation, notarization, apostille, or a specific document-set structure. Since a tender has a fixed submission deadline and any request for supplementation directly eats into that timeline, reviewing the exact submission requirement from the earliest stage matters more here than almost anywhere else.
Right-Sized Translation, Filed Correctly the First Time
Get in touch about thisAn exclusive license means only the licensee may use the patent — not even the patent holder. A non-exclusive license lets the licensee use the patent within agreed terms, without shutting out the patent holder or other licensees.
No — the US doesn't require mandatory registration for an exclusive license to take effect, unlike Korea's 등록주의 system. The agreement can instead be recorded with the USPTO, which puts third parties on notice that the license exists.
Often not — confirming the actual required scope with the receiving US firm first can mean only a partial excerpt (e.g. the section showing a name change) needs translation, reducing both cost and turnaround.
It depends on the receiving agency's requirement — courts, embassies, and government agencies generally require a formal Certification, while some private or lighter-weight filings accept a simple Verification. This office confirms which one your specific filing needs before translating.
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A Verification submitted where a formal Certification was required can get the filing rejected; over-certifying when a Verification would have sufficed just adds unnecessary cost — confirming the requirement upfront avoids both outcomes.
Common triggers are foreign investment or joint-venture contracts, establishing an overseas subsidiary or branch, opening an account or seeking a loan at a foreign bank, and overseas stock exchange listing reviews.
Terms from Korea's 상법 (Commercial Act) often don't have an exact 1:1 equivalent in a foreign legal system — choosing the right term requires understanding both legal frameworks, while still keeping the translation faithful (not loosely paraphrased) to avoid changing the clause's legal meaning.
Yes — as an example, a 32-page Articles of Incorporation requested on a Thursday evening with a Monday-morning deadline was completed as a 60-page certified English translation over the intervening weekend, without compromising legal accuracy.
A common 3-document baseline: the Report on Overseas Direct Investment (proves the parent-subsidiary legal link), the Remittance/Investment Report (proves capital was actually transferred from a legitimate source), and the Business Plan (the primary basis for the investment decision itself).
It's the key evidence that a subsidiary's capital came from a legitimate, transparent, actually-transferred source — confirming the entity is a genuine operating company, not a shell company with no real capital behind it.
It means the translation needs to simultaneously convey the original meaning completely, use official international investment/finance terminology, faithfully reproduce the document's structure, and read the way the investor expects information to flow — closer to an accurate rebuild of the document than a simple language conversion.
The Public Procurement Service purchases a domestic innovation product on a trial basis, places it with an overseas public institution for real-world field testing, and reports the results back to the company and PPS — giving the company a genuine overseas usage track record for export or product-improvement purposes.
It combines the product's technical performance data, field test/evaluation results, and formal review/meeting records in a single document, so the translation has to satisfy specialized technical-translation accuracy and formal administrative-document conventions simultaneously.
Providing English papers, patent specifications, product catalogs, or prior foreign-submission materials lets the translation reflect the company's own established terminology and technical context precisely, rather than the translator guessing at company-specific usage.
Someone granted translation authority under that country's own law — for a document originating in Korea, the only Korean qualification that fits this description is a licensed 외국어번역행정사.
A local notary reading the translation needs zero room for legal misreading — which is why EU/Dutch-standard administrative and real-estate terminology, precise deposit/payment structure, and legally neutral mortgage language matter as much as accuracy.
Careless translation can make it read as a breach-of-contract penalty or damages provision, when it's actually the lawful exercise of a statutory rescission right available to both parties before the interim payment — the translation needs to keep that legal structure unambiguous to avoid raising unnecessary suspicion.
A Dutch notary reviews the two documents together to confirm ownership, encumbrances, and clean title — address, owner name, mortgage details, and figures all need to line up across both documents, since even one apparent mismatch can prompt the notary or bank to demand additional explanation.
"Condominium" carries a strong North American legal/residential connotation that can mislead a foreign notary into assuming US-style condo law or a luxury-complex implication — "Collective Building" conveys the underlying legal fact (a building divided into individually owned units) neutrally, without presupposing any country's legal framework.
Not necessarily — for a submission to a Dutch notary/bank, this office kept the metric area figures as recorded, since that matches the convention EU real estate document reviewers already expect.
The registering agency examines who actually manufactures the product, the product's specifics, and its supply structure — the OEM contract is the single document that proves all three, making its certified translation central to the registration filing.
It's directly tied to Korea's amended Tobacco Business Act and tax code, so the figure has to remain faithful to the source while also being expressed in terminology the Korean administrative agency uses and recognizes.
The administrative agency uses that distinction to assess the importer/seller's eligibility for registration — blurring it in translation can obscure exactly who is legally responsible for what in the supply chain.
A bank's compliance review often cares less about any single document's individual completeness than about how the entire submitted set corroborates a company's entity, ownership structure, and unrelatedness to sanctioned parties — two documents alone frequently can't establish that full picture.
"Confirmation" implies a simple factual check, while "Declaration" conveys that the company is formally stating a specific fact on the record and taking responsibility for it — a distinction financial-institution compliance reviewers weigh alongside the content itself.
It gives the document the visual and administrative credibility of a genuine company-issued statement, clarifies its source, and signals the company's formal position — reinforced further by the representative's signature and company seal.
Some receiving customs authorities require it to confirm the move is backed by an official assignment (formal posting status), not just to process the shipment itself — depending on the office, the required set can expand to an employment certificate, appointment letter, and family relation documents.
Often not — translation notarization or a certified translation certificate (번역확인증명서) is frequently requested in addition, even though the Philippines is a Hague Apostille Convention member; the exact requirement depends on the specific customs office or moving company.
Yes — this office regularly receives the original document by email and completes the full translation and notarization process remotely for clients who can't visit, or are managing a relocation from out of town.
The core set is typically the Certificate of Registered Matters, Business Registration Certificate, Articles of Incorporation, and Shareholder Register, often together with signature verification for a Power of Attorney or Board Resolution and the representative/signatory's passport.
Banks examine it to assess who is legally authorized to open the account or sign on the company's behalf — it defines corporate purpose, share structure, representative authority, and decision-making structure.
It's the key document that lets a foreign bank trace back to the company's Ultimate Beneficial Owner (UBO) — as foreign institutions tighten UBO verification, a complex ownership structure can mean supplementary documents beyond the register are requested too.
Often not — the required certification can be Certified Translation, a Certificate of Translation, notarization, apostille, or consular legalization depending on the specific bank, and the same document can need a different method for a different receiving bank or country.
Not weak technical capability or price — it's being ruled ineligible at the document-screening stage over an incomplete or improperly certified corporate document package, since a foreign procurement board can't directly evaluate a Korean-language document.
Corporate eligibility (registry certificate, business registration, shareholder register, corporate seal certificate), financial soundness (financial statement, VAT tax base, tax payment certificates, credit rating), and technical capability/track record (performance certificates, patents, factory registration/licenses).
Often not — the actual submission can also require the translator's identity and contact information on the document, a Certificate of Translation, notarization, apostille, or a specific document-set structure beyond just an English version.
A 외국어번역행정사 can issue a legally recognized Certificate of Translation on the spot under 행정사법 제20조, carries direct legal accountability for translation accuracy (critical for patent specs, registries, and financial statements), and can advise on what comes after translation — apostille versus embassy consular confirmation — which varies by receiving country.