The Amended Substantive Examination Guideline of Design Patent Become Effective on April 1, 2016
In order to meet international trend and domestic industry’s demand, TIPO has amended the examination guideline of design patent after referring to international norms, examination practices and precedents. On April 1, 2016, the amended examination guideline entered into force. The key revisions are:
 
1. How the drawing should be disclosed is changed for "designs which are not claiming colors". For those designs claiming colors, it is required to disclose drawings with colors. Designs which are not claiming colors shall disclose the ink drawings, grey-scale computer-generated drawings or black-and-white photographs. Drawings are the main object for examination and descriptions are supplementary.
2. In order to better distinguish between "claimed portion" and "unclaimed portion" of design, the applicant is allowed to use solid/broken lines, half-transparent coloring, grey-scale coloring, and circling the scope or other forms of disclosure.
3. The purpose of the unclaimed portion of design is revised. It is now used to explain (a) the article to which the design is applied, (b) the position, size and layout of the claimed design and (c) the environment of the design.
Source: TIPO, Link