Joohwan Lee
Expert Adviser, Korea Invention Promotion Association, Republic of Korea; Ph.D. in Law
Correspondence to Joohwan Lee, E-mail: kirt75@hanmail.net
Volume 20, Number 3, Pages 1-31, September 2025.
Journal of Intellectual Property 2025;20(3):1-31. https://doi.org/10.34122/jip.2025.20.3.1
Received on April 20, 2025, Revised on May 13, 2025, Accepted on August 27, 2025, Published on September 30, 2025.
Copyright © 2025 Korea Institute of Intellectual Property.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided that the article is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.
Because the enhanced damages under the Patent Act went into effect on July 9, 2019, no decision was made to calculate enhanced damages until the Busan District Court 2023GaHap42160 decision because the lower courts had previously decided that if patent infringement occurred around July 9, 2019, the relevant provision could not be applied when interpreting Article 3 of the Supplementary Provisions of the old Patent Act. However, the Patent Court 2023Na11276 decision explicitly affirmed that enhanced damages could be applied even if patent infringement occurred around July 9, 2019. Additionally, the Patent Court defined “willful infringement” in Article 128, Paragraph 8, as meaning that the infringer commits an act of infringement while knowing that the act will result in patent infringement; thus, the Court determined that the defendant’s act is a willful infringement. Furthermore, after presenting eight factors in Article 128, Paragraph 9 analyzes each consideration and doubles the amount of compensatory damages for patent infringement occurring after July 9, 2019. The Patent Court Decision 2023Na11276 is the first appellate court decision to calculate enhanced damages and is significant as a “landmark decision” that serves as a guideline for lower courts seeking to apply the enhanced damages.
Enhanced Damages, Punitive Damages, Willful Infringement, Eight Factors, Article 128 Paragraph 8 of the Patent Act, Article 128 Paragraph 9 of the Patent Act
No potential conflict of interest relevant to this article was reported.
The author received manuscript fees for this article from Korea Institute of Intellectual Property.