1. Case summary
1) Who did Barun Law (attorneys Kim Jae-ho, Chung Hyun-jee, Jung Young-hun, Shim Min-seon and Yoo Yun) represent?
Defendant B
2) Case background
Plaintiff A is a holder of a patent right to a certain invention (the “Patented Invention”) that was applied on July 3, 2012 and registered on February 26, 2014 (the “Patent Right”). Defendant B is a person engaging in authentication service by using its own server for credit card payments made by users.
On June 29, 2018, Plaintiff A filed an injunctive claim for the infringement of the Patent Right with the Seoul Central District Court on the ground that a certain technology used by Defendant B was infringing the Patent (the “Technology”).
Making excessively exaggerated interpretation of the scope of the Patent Right to the Patented Invention, Plaintiff A argued that the Technology infringed the text of the Patented Invention or violated the principle of equity. As a response to the argument, Defendant B argued that Plaintiff A’s interpretation went against the general legal theory as well as the description of the Patented Invention. The competent court dismissed the Plaintiff A’s claim.
2.Issues
The issues in this case were whether it could be deemed that the credit card terminal, which is one of the elements consisting of the Patented Invention, was one identical to the PC in which the payment program was installed and whether Plaintiff A sufficiently proved that the Patent Right was infringed.
3. Our argument and role
In this case, we convinced the court that
① according to the scope and description of the Patented Invention, the payment terminal (i.e., the seller’s terminal) could not be corresponding to the buyer’s PC in which the payment program was installed; and
② Plaintiff A failed to sufficiently prove its argument about the infringement of the Patent Right by the Technology.
4. Decision
The Seoul Central District Court dismissed all the claims made by Plaintiff A in this lawsuit.
5. Implications
The decision is meaningful in that the court precluded the extended interpretation of the scope of the Patent Right argued by Plaintiff A and dismissed the Plaintiff A’s injunctive claim on the basis of its finding that Plaintiff A had failed to prove the alleged infringement of the Patent Right by Defendant B.
