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Students from the Department of Industrial and Management Systems Engineering—Seok-Hoon Lee (Master's), Jun-Yong Lee (Undergraduate), and Min-Kyu Park (Undergraduate)—won the Minister of Trade, Industry and Energy Award (4th place overall) in the patent strategy establishment category of the 2024 Campus Patent Universiade (CPU). The Campus Patent Universiade is Korea's largest industry-academia intellectual property competition, where university students present practical solutions for actual patent-related issues faced by companies and research institutes. In this year’s competition, Kyung Hee student teams collectively won a total of six awards

Presenting new patent strategy tailored to Korea on urban air mobility technology
The task assigned to the students in this competition was to develop an analysis framework that can explore and identify promising technologies in the urban air mobility (UAM) field and propose patent strategies for Korean companies. Student Jun-yong Lee explained their approach, “First, we did a broad analysis of current patents held by competitors and companies to identify technologies that are gaining attention in the UAM field and predict emerging future trends.” Since major aerospace companies, including Airbus and Boeing, hold numerous patents in all areas of UAM, it is often difficult to identify the crucial key aspect of technological development that will lead to the next breakthrough in the field. Therefore, conducting a comprehensive analysis of broader trends in emerging technology is essential. Student Seok-hoon Lee elaborated, “We closely examined patents from new up-and-coming companies specializing in electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft (eVTOL) like Joby Aviation, Archer Aviation, and Volocopter, as part of our efforts to have a clear grasp on the latest technology trends and market competition situations in each country.” Student Park emphasized, “In addition to patents, we enhanced the reliability of our data and deepened our analysis by referencing latest news articles such as the operation of air taxis at the 2024 Paris Olympics to examine UAM technology in action as well as significant academic papers on specialized UAM technologies.”

Patent analysis and strategy development by putting classroom methodology into practice
In the patent analysis process, the team applied the methodology learned in class and through undergraduate research activities. Analyzing patent documents requires a special approach to derive necessary information, as they are often unstructured and irregular. Therefore, the team used various analysis methodologies including text mining, topic modeling, and GTM to identify key topics within patent documents of competitors and companies. Through this process, they identified “blank technology fields,” where related technologies have not yet been patented in the market, enabling them to pinpoint promising innovation opportunities. In addition, the team conducted a quantitative analysis of patent application trends by country, market size, and technology flow to predict high-potential markets. They also proposed investment priorities based on Korea’s technological strengths, global competitive landscape, and potential collaboration strategies among companies.

The proposed patent strategy received high marks for its effective use of analytical methodologies and practical applicability in industry. Student Jun-yong Lee said, “As a result of the evaluation by patent attorneys, we received positive feedback that this strategy can be fully applied in industrial settings.” Professor Hyunhong Choi remarked, “While other teams relied on conventional methodologies, our students distinguished themselves by integrating multiple patent analysis techniques and proposing a new analytical framework to support policy decision-making.”

Student-centered mentoring was the driving force behind success
In addition to the students’ efforts, Professor Choi’s guidance also played a crucial role in this success. He explained, “I mentored the students to ensure their ideas stood out while being fully compliant with the competition’s evaluation criteria. Since there were many other teams working on the same problem, I emphasized differentiation. My goal was to set a clear overall direction that would help the students maximize their own capabilities.”

Kyung Hee achieved outstanding results at the Campus Patent Universiade for two consecutive years. In particular, the Department of Industrial and Management Systems Engineering has consistently produced winning teams, demonstrating once again its reputation for excellence in industry-academia collaboration and intellectual property research. Students Seok-hoon Lee, Jun-yong Lee, and Min-gyu Park expressed their commitment to take on more challenges and achieve successes through their continued studies and research.