Professor Chaho Jung has shared with me an interesting decision, the Judgment of Jan. 18, 2024, 2021Na1787 (Korea Pat. Ct.). The decision has at least two holdings of particular interest to the subject matter of this blog. First, to estimate the profits derived from the sale of the defendant’s product, in the absence of evidence provided by the defendant, the court calculated a contribution margin using (I'm quoting Professor Jung here and below) “the variable cost-to-sales ratio for the ‘medical substances and pharmaceutical products’ sector, as analyzed in the Bank of Korea’s Corporate Management Analysis, which is based on corporate income tax return data provided by the National Tax Service.” Second, the court holds that “[a]s long as there is an act of patent infringement within the country, the patent holder is entitled to compensation for damages that have a sufficient causal relationship with the infringement, and such damages are not necessarily limited to those that occurred domestically.” This second holding, if affirmed on appeal (I understand the case is pending before the Korean Supreme Court), would seem to align Korean practice with last year's decision of the German BGH, Judgment of May 7, 2024, X ZR 104/22—Verdampfungstrockneranlage (see previous discussion on this blog here). The overall award is for over 12 billion won (about $9 million), plus interest.
No comments:
Post a Comment