직무발명보상금청구권의 법적 성질과 소멸시효 기산점 - 대법원 2024. 5. 30. 선고 2021다258463 판결 -

The extinctive prescription varies depending on the legal nature of the right. The Supreme Court of Korea, in its decision of May 30th, 2024, generally considers the starting point of the extinctive prescription for the right to claim compensation for employee inventions to be the time when the employer acquires the rights to the employee invention. However, if the employer’s internal regulations specify the timing of compensation payments, the Court holds that such a specified payment date should be regarded as the starting point of the extinctive prescription. Nevertheless, the ruling is flawed in that it applies the provision governing the timing of "implementation compensation" payments to the overall right to claim compensation for employee inventions. The right to claim compensation for employee inventions should be classified as either a statutory claim or a contractual claim depending on its cause of occurrence, and the starting point of the extinctive prescription should be determined accordingly. The provisions on the timing of payment for individual compensation items set forth in an employer’s internal regulations cannot constitute a legal impediment to the exercise of the overall right to claim compensation for employee inventions, which is a statutory claim. In this regard, the legal nature of the employer’s internal regulations specifying individual compensation items may be questioned, but such regulations do not fall under the "rules of employment" under the Labor Standards Act. The ruling appears to take the same position.