Journal of Intellectual Property (J Intellect Property; JIP)

KCI Indexed
OPEN ACCESS, PEER REVIEWED

pISSN 1975-5945
eISSN 2733-8487
Research Article

Criteria for Determining the Direct Infringement of Patent Inventions with Multiple Components: Based on Supreme Court Decisions 2019Da222782 and 2019Da222799

The Wave IP Law Firm, Republic of Korea

Correspondence to Jae Yong Jeong, E-mail: toori10235@gmail.com

Volume 20, Number 4, Pages 1-30, December 2025.
Journal of Intellectual Property 2025;20(4):1-30. https://doi.org/10.34122/jip.2025.20.4.1
Received on September 22, 2025, Revised on October 12, 2025, Accepted on December 03, 2025, Published on December 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.

Abstract

This study proposes an integrated standard for harmonizing the judgment criteria of the Supreme Court Decisions 2019Da222782 and 2019Da222799 (the subject decisions) and appellate court decisions, which remain valid because of the partial dismissal of appeals in the subject decisions regarding patent infringement judgments for multi-component inventions. Both the subject decisions and appellate courts require that the invention be finalized (or disposed of) by a single entity and that the invention’s functional effects be realized solely through component production. However, the differences in the subject decisions’ requirements for “extremely minor assembly/processing” and the appellate court’s requirements for “no assembly/processing” leave room for interpretation. This study categorizes component combinations into three categories: (i) no additional processing/assembly required, (ii) cases where additional processing/assembly is required but is extremely minor, and (iii) cases where additional processing/assembly is required and is not trivial. For each category, the existence of direct infringement is determined by applying the legal principles of the subject decisions or appellate courts. These criteria harmoniously integrate the requirements of the two judgments, and their applicability has been confirmed through various case analyses.

Keywords

Territorialism, All Element Rule, 2019Da222782, suture, medical thread insertion device

Notes

Conflicts of Interest

No potential conflict of interest relevant to this article was reported.

Funding

The author received manuscript fees for this article from Korea Institute of Intellectual Property.

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