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Sunglass copycat case results in Korea's first detentions over product design theft

Published: 17 Mar. 2026, 18:50 Updated: 17 Mar. 2026, 19:49

Kim Yong-hoon, the director general of the Intellectual Property Protection & International Cooperation Bureau at the Ministry of Intellectual Property, briefs reporters at the press room of the government complex in Daejeon on March 17. [MINISTRY OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY]

A sunglass design copycat case has resulted in the country’s first detentions involving the crime of copying the design of another company’s product.

The Ministry of Intellectual Property’s Technology & Design Police Division, or the Technology Police, and the patent crime investigation unit of the Daejeon District Prosecutors’ Office made the announcement on Tuesday.

The charges were brought under the Unfair Competition Prevention and Trade Secret Protection Act.

Those indicted included the head of a company accused of importing and selling products that copied the style of another company’s goods.

The company head had no separate design development staff, according to the Technology Police. Instead, they personally photographed popular items, including sunglasses from a well-known domestic eyewear brand, and sent the images to an overseas manufacturer.

The suspect is accused of selling 321,000 copycat items across 51 product lines, worth 12.3 billion won ($8.26 million) at retail prices, from February 2023 to June 2025, and of importing 413,000 items across 44 copied product lines.

The investigation found that, among the 51 copied products, 29 showed more than a 95 percent match with the victim company’s products within a margin of error of 1 millimeter when compared through 3-D scanning. Eighteen of them matched the victim company’s products by more than 99 percent, making them what authorities described as perfect copies.

Counterfeit goods seized by the Ministry of Intellectual Property’s Technology Police Division and the Daejeon District Prosecutors’ Office. [MINISTRY OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY]

The victim company had built its own value as a Korean brand, spending at least a year on research and development for each product and committing around 50 people to the effort.

The company reportedly sustained economic losses due to the resulting damage to its brand value and a steep decline in sales. Because fashion trends move quickly, many product designs in the industry are not officially registered. As a result, all 51 of the victim company’s affected products were not registered.

To keep the suspects from disposing of their criminal proceeds before a final ruling, the Technology Police applied in July and September 2025 to freeze the copycat companies’ assets. The Daejeon District Court granted asset preservation orders totaling 7.8 billion won.

The ministry noted that a 2017 revision to the law made it possible to punish unfair competition even when a design has not been registered, as long as a newly launched product less than three years old is copied and sold.

“This is the first case in which a suspect was punished and detained for selling an exact copy of an unregistered new product design,” said Intellectual Property Minister Kim Yong-sun. “We will strictly punish crimes that free ride on others’ work through design-right infringement or by copying the shapes of newly launched products.”

This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
BY KIM BANG-HYUN [[email protected]]