While Samsung is working on its Ethereum based blockchain, someone in South Korea, independent of the Asian telecommunications giant, has filed an application for “Samsung Coin” trademark with the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO).
The trademark application, published in Korean and English, dates back to July 10th, 2019 and the applicant is Kim Nam Jin. The deposit is a downloadable computer program with electronic money and has been presented for the following categories: electronic money card (G390803); electronic encryption device (G390803); IC card with electronic money function (G520101). At the moment, the legal status of the deposit is “Accepted” by the South Korean institution KIPO.
Coindesk, who first reported the news, was able to speak with a Samsung spokesperson who officially denied it was their initiative. Therefore, Mr Kim Nam Jin is not a representative of the multinational Samsung but would be operating following a personal initiative for currently unknown reasons.
Moreover, the filing of the Samsung Coin trademark makes no reference to a cryptocurrency or blockchain technology and this aspect arouses a lot of curiosity and creates reasons for asking questions.
What’s the point of registering Samsung Coin?
It is probably just an operation to attract media attention.
A partial answer can be found by searching the database of the South Korean register and patents KIPO, where we discover that Kim Nam Jin, the same day, also made another application for a trademark, this time under the name of “ThinQ Wallet”, a name that resembles the smartphone model LG G7 ThinQ, also a South Korean company.
Here the mystery thickens, because a few days earlier LG Electronics had filed an application for the trademark “ThinQ Wallet” both in South Korea and in the United States of America.
