특허권자와 제3자 모두의 이익을 도모하는 특허표시 활성화를 위한 특허법 개정방안

The Korea Patent Act’s Article 223 stipulates patent and patent application marking. Patent marking system requires that a patent holder inform that patented article is under patent protection, and the purpose of the patent marking is to help prevent innocent infringement. The patent marking system is widely utilized by countries in the Anglo-American common law system. That is different from Korea patent system to presume negligence of patent infringement by acknowledging that the public had reason to be aware of existence of the patents-in-suit and their claimed invention based on publication of the fact that the patents-in-suit are registered. In other words, there is no incentive for a patent holder to voluntarily mark a patented article with the patent, and therefore the patent marking system has never been considered as an important issue in a case of Korea’s patent infringement. However, the stipulation for presumption of negligence has been strictly interpreted by the court. As a result, only a patent infringer bears a heavy burden to figure out whether the patent has been existed and any possibility to avoid patent infringement. Since such practice would be unrealistic depending on the circumstance of a given cases is subject to criticism from the legal academics. That criticism shows the necessity for discussion to encourage patent marking as a countermeasure against court’s current practice. In this regard, this article, firstly, examined legislative examples of patent marking system in the Anglo-American common law system. Moreover, this article suggests a realistically feasible amendment of the Korea Patent Act, which can provide a patent holder with some incentive to actively mark a patented article with the patent, and also suggests additional legislative proposal to input the patent marking as an example in the Section 9(2) of the Article 128 of the Korea Patent Act that states degree of knowledge of willfulness to award enhanced damages. The Korea Patent Act stipulates enhanced damages based on the infringer’s willfulness. Since a finding of the willfulness requires the infringer’s actual knowledge of existence of the patents-in-suit, it would be a significantly attractive incentive to the patent holder to enact presumption of actual knowledge of the existence of the patents-in-suit where there is patent marking. On the other hand, if the Korea Patent Act’s Article 127 stipulating on indirect patent infringement is amended with addition of a legal theory for contributory infringement regarding ‘dual-purpose product’, a patent holder bears burden to prove that a defendant was aware of existence of the patents-in-suit. In this case, it is expected that existence of patent marking may be considered as a means to prove the defendant’s knowledge.