직무발명보상금청구소송에서의 확정판결의 기판력의 범위 - 삼성SDI 사건을 중심으로 -

According to Article 216(1) of the Korean Civil Procedure Act, the scope of res judicata of a final judgment shall be only applied the “order” of the judgment. The same law of res judicata shall also be applied to the lawsuit for the employee invention remuneration. In the first lawsuit of the Samsung SDI case (Suwon District Court 2009GaHab2746 case), the plaintiff requested a part of total expected remuneration. After determining specific figures such as sales revenue, royalty rate, contribution rate of inventions and utility model and the plaintiff's contribution rate, the court decided full amount of remuneration, and the judgment has become final. Afterwards, the plaintiff filed a so-called residual claim lawsuit against the remaining amount. In the second lawsuit, the first instance court dismissed the lawsuit on the grounds of violating the rule of good faith (Suwon District Court 2015GaHab68143 case), but the appellate court recognized the residual request and remanded the case to the lower court for calculating remuneration (Patent Court 2017Na1438 case). Our authors think this is a judgment based on the res judicata principle stipulated in Article 216(1) of the Civil Procedure Act. In the third lawsuit, the court completely reexamined the sales revenue, royalty rate, contribution rate of invention and utility model, plaintiff's contribution rate, etc. which were already determined by the final judgment of the first lawsuit, and decided new figures (Patent Court 2020Na1155 case). This article specifies the issue of retrial and re-judgment in the third lawsuit for the figures determined by the final judgment in the first lawsuit of Samsung SDI case. This type of repeated trial will bring additional burden to the parties and the court, and harms the coherence of court judgments. The current doctrine of res judicata cannot produce a reasonable result in a lawsuit for employee invention remuneration. To address this issue, this article analyzes the lawsuit subject matter theories of South Korea, Japan, the United States, and Germany. As a result, it is reasonable to expand the scope of res judicata in the lawsuits of employees invention to hearing and judgment, rather than narrowly viewing it as an “order of a judgement (objective scope of res judicata = subject matter).” That is to say, firstly, from the perspective of interpretive theory, treating the scope of res judicata as the “two part theory” in Korean litigation physics, where the object of action is the “relationship between application and fact”, is most suitable for claims for compensation for employee’s invention. Therefore, in the future, courts are recommended to apply the two part theory. Secondly, from a legislative perspective, this paper advocates the necessity of introducing the issue preclusion theory of the United States into the Korea Invention Promotion Act. As a solution to implement its proposition, the Invention Promotion Act should establish the regulation of “the res judicata of the final judgment in the lawsuit for compensation claims for employee’s invention involves the main disputed points of trial and judgment in order to determine the litigation object and its litigation object.”