The Journal of Intellectual Property (J Intellect Property; JIP)

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pISSN 1975-5945
eISSN 2733-8487
Original Article

Measures to Improve the Legal Principles of the Extinctive Prescription for the Right of Remuneration for Employee Inventions

Expert Adviser, Korea Invention Promotion Association, Republic of Korea; Ph.D. in Law.

Correspondence to Joohwan Lee, E-mail: kirt75@hanmail.net

Volume 19, Number 4, Pages 121-151, December 2024.
The Journal of Intellectual Property 2024;19(4):121-151. https://doi.org/10.34122/jip.2024.19.4.6
Received on October 04, 2024, Revised on October 31, 2024, Accepted on December 05, 2024, Published on December 30, 2024.
Copyright © 2024 Korea Institute of Intellectual Property.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 (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

According to the Supreme Court’s legal principles on the extinctive prescription for right of remuneration for employee invention, if there are no in-house employee invention regulations, or even if they exist, the time and procedure for payment of remuneration are not stipulated, the prescription proceeds from the time of succession of the invention and is completed early. In particular, this situation is harsh on employees who “did not know” that they could exercise the right to claim remuneration while the prescription was in progress and who “know” that they could exercise the right to claim remuneration only after the prescription was completed. Therefore, it is necessary to introduce a method of determining the starting point of the prescription based on the “subjective perception” of employees. Even if “10 years” have elapsed from the time of succession of the right to the invention or the time when the legal obstacle to the employee’s exercise of the right to claim remuneration has lapsed based on the Supreme Court’s legal principles, the prescription is completed only after “10 years” has elapsed “from the time when the employee knew or could know” that the employee could exercise the right to claim remuneration. This improvement plan is a “good way” to protect employees.

Keywords

Employee Invention, Employee Invention Remuneration, Statutory Credit, Extinctive Prescription, Starting Date, Period, Employee’s Perception, Legal Obstacle

Notes

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declared no conflicts of interest.

Funding

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

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