Introduction
The news that South Korea’s Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy has announced that 112 technologies held by the POSCO Group will be provided free of charge to 75 domestic small and mid-sized companies is too significant to be dismissed as a mere corporate support measure. It reflects a way of thinking that views intellectual property not only as an asset for exclusivity, but also as infrastructure for strengthening industry as a whole.
What is particularly noteworthy is the wide range of fields covered by the transfer, including machinery and equipment, materials and processes, energy, and environment and resources. Moreover, the technologies include areas closely tied to future industrial competitiveness, such as diagnostic devices for early detection of abnormalities in battery packs, separators for secondary batteries, steelmaking-site technologies, and waste-treatment-related technologies. In that sense, this can be seen as an attempt to raise the overall level of the industrial ecosystem, not just individual companies, by opening up dormant technologies to outside users.
Technology Sharing Is Not an Act of Goodwill, but a Strategy
When we see this kind of news, it is easy to frame it as a heartwarming story of large corporations supporting smaller businesses. In reality, however, it likely carries a much stronger strategic meaning.
Among the patents and know-how held by large corporations, there is no shortage of assets that they are unable to fully utilize themselves. Many technologies remain dormant as assets: costs were invested in filing and R&D, yet the technologies were never put to use because of issues such as fit with the company’s own business or shifting priorities. If those technologies can be transferred to small and mid-sized firms and lead to new products or new businesses, social and economic value can be created.
In other words, this round of technology sharing represents the recirculation of underutilized intellectual property. For the IP holder, it is more rational to let unused technologies spread externally than to leave them idle, because doing so can ultimately broaden the base of the domestic industrial sector. For the recipient, it offers a foothold for market entry while reducing the initial burden of research and development. It is an institutional design with clear rationality for both sides.
What Truly Matters Is Not “Technology Transfer,” but “Commercialization Support”
That said, simply handing over technology free of charge does not automatically revitalize industry. Rather, the real question is what comes after the transfer.
A company that receives patents or technical documentation cannot necessarily move straight into productization or implementation. In practice, there are many hurdles, including design optimization, verification of mass-production suitability, quality assurance, regulatory compliance, and market development. In many cases, success or failure depends less on the technology itself than on whether the company has the systems, personnel, funding, and customer access needed to make effective use of it.
In that sense, the value of this measure cannot be judged solely by the fact that technologies are distributed free of charge. What truly matters is whether the program is designed so that recipient companies can actually reach commercialization, through hands-on support, matching, additional development, and opportunities for demonstration. Technology sharing is only the entry point; the real test of industrial policy lies beyond that.
The Role of Patents Is Changing
This news also shows that the role of patents itself is changing. Traditionally, patents have often been understood as weapons for excluding competitors and protecting a company’s own competitive advantage. That function, of course, remains important. But it is not the whole story.
Patents can also serve as tools for expanding the market by allowing others to use them. In fields such as materials, equipment, energy, and environmental technology—where ties to supply chains and real-world implementation are especially strong—it may, over the medium to long term, be more beneficial even for the patent holder to open up certain technologies within a defined scope and foster surrounding industries, rather than keeping everything locked up internally.
For example, if companies producing related materials and peripheral equipment grow, the overall market expands. If common technologies spread, standardization and cost reduction also advance. As a result, the competitiveness of the entire industry—including upstream and downstream sectors—strengthens, and the position of the large corporation at the center of that ecosystem becomes stronger as well. In other words, strength no longer lies simply in keeping patents closed, but in being able to design what to keep closed and what to open.
Points to Note When Viewing This as a Korean-Style Industrial Policy
What makes this case especially interesting is that it is not a unilateral decision by a single company, but one linked to government industrial policy. The government has set out a policy of promoting commercialization through more active technology transfer, and large corporations are supplying their held technologies in response. This suggests that IP policy, industrial policy, and SME policy are increasingly becoming integrated.
In this context, patents are not merely an issue for legal departments. They are part of R&D policy, growth strategy, and supply-chain strengthening measures. Especially in strategic industries such as batteries, energy, and environmental response, this kind of policy-driven use of intellectual property is likely to become even more important.
It is also worth noting that the technology-sharing program has been continuously implemented since 2017 and has already accumulated a substantial track record of technology transfers. This is not a one-off campaign; it is meaningful precisely because IP sharing is being operated as an ongoing system. A system only becomes truly useful when it continues over time, allowing companies to incorporate it into their planning and decision-making.
Implications for Japanese Companies
This development is not someone else’s problem for Japanese companies. Large Japanese corporations also hold vast numbers of patents, but not all of them are directly tied to business operations. How to handle underutilized patents is a common challenge for many companies.
What is needed, therefore, is not merely a defensive mindset focused on reducing unused patents, but also an offensive mindset focused on converting unused patents into external value. There is no single method: free disclosure, low-cost licensing, demonstration partnerships, and provision to startups are all possible options. What matters is reviewing one’s IP portfolio from both a business-strategy perspective and an industrial-strategy perspective.
It also seems that patent departments are entering an era in which they will be judged not only by the number of patent applications filed or rights obtained, but by the value they create through business implementation, external collaboration, and industrial spillover effects. The center of gravity may well be shifting from the management of intellectual property to the active utilization of intellectual property.
Conclusion
At first glance, the POSCO Group’s free technology transfer appears to be a story about support for smaller businesses. In reality, however, it carries a significance far beyond that. It reflects a way of thinking that treats intellectual property not merely as a tool of exclusivity, but as a medium for rebuilding industrial competitiveness.
Going forward, the source of competitiveness will no longer be measured simply by how many patents a company holds. Rather, the key question will be how well it can determine which patents to protect, which patents to circulate, and how to convert them into strength for industry as a whole. This news seems to illustrate that turning point with remarkable clarity.