Government R&D Center 'Stole Start-up Technology'
18 August, 2018
The state-run Rural Development Administration has been accused of copying technology developed by a start-up company.
uLikeKorea, a start-up specializing in veterinary products, in a press conference in Seoul on Thursday accused the RDA of copying technology the company developed called LiveCare.
uLikeKorea head Kim Hee-jin said, "We spent more than W10 billion over three years to develop the technology and it was taken away from us overnight" (US$1=W1,131).
The company claims that a device called Biocapsule from the RDA is a copy of LiveCare.
"I heard of many instances of big businesses stealing technology developed by start-ups, but I never imagined that a government agency would do that," Kim said.
uLikeKorea head Kim Hee-jin explains the technological similarity between its LiveCare products and the RDA's Biocapsule at a press conference on Thursday.
LiveCare is a capsule that is inserted into the stomachs of cattle to gather data on the physical conditions of livestock by comparing them to around 8 million cases of big data. uLikeKorea patented the product in 2014 and began selling it in 2015.
"I showed the product to the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs in January 2015, and the RDA called to ask detailed questions about the product, so we thought the government was trying to help us," Kim said. "We consulted the Ministry of SMEs and Start-ups, which told us that the RDA was violating our patent."
A company lawyer told reporters that the RDA appears to have illegally copied patents like a mechanism to keep the device inside a cow's stomach as well as core technologies.
Kim said the RDA's attempt to provide the technology free threatens uLikeKorea's plans to earn W10 billion a year by selling LiveCare. "The RDA has made all of our efforts go to waste," she added.
The RDA claims it started research on the biocapsule in 2011, and the product is different from LiveCare in key technologies that gauge a cow's temperature and metabolism. The RDA also says its product uses WiFi networks while LiveCare uses IoT networks.
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