청구범위 해석에 있어서‘상세한 설명의 참작’에 관한 최근 대법원 판결 분석 및 외국 사례와의 비교 검토

We can find two general principles in the Supreme Courtjudgments regarding consideration of the description in claimconstruction. The first principle is that the terms presented in claims aremore important than the contents presented in the description if we canunderstand the technical meanings of claims apparently. The otherprinciple is that we should always use description in the patentdocument in order to interpret claims. However the Supreme Court ofKorea tends to put emphasis on claims rather than the description inclaim construction despite of a recent legal principle on claimconstruction that the description and drawing shall be used to interpretthe claims irrespective of the clarity of an expression or a wordpresented in a claim. In Japan, Intellectual Property High Court recently seems toconsider the description and drawing in claim construction more thanbefore regardless of the clarity of an expression in a claim. These claimconstruction rules in Japan are similar to those of the U.S and Europe. European Patent Office applies the Article 69 of the European PatentConvention and the Protocol on the Interpretation of Article 69 wheninterpreting claims to decide the patentability. U.S courts alsoemphasize that claims must be read in view of the specification, of which they are a part. Judgments regarding claim construction in the Supreme Court ofKorea are different from those of foreign countries, like Japan, U.S, andEurope. I think we need to reinforce the consideration of the descriptionand drawing in claim construction and read claims in view of thespecification. Also it is desirable to decide whether technicalsignification of a word presented in a claim is clear or not when decidingthe clarity of claims.