특허청구범위 해석시 상세한 설명 등의 참조에 관한 고찰 = Reference of Detailed Description of Invention in Patent Claim Interpretation

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

According to Article 97 of Korean Patent Act, the ‘scope of protection conferred by a patented invention shall be determined by the subject matters described in the claims.’ Patent claims are the scope of rights that patent applicants request to be recognized as an exclusive right, subject inventions that the patent examiner decides whether the inventions have patentability, and standards that 3rd parties may decide whether their acts infringe patented rights. Thus, patent claims should be written clearly to be understood by a person skilled in the art.
Writing claims objectively and clearly is extremely difficult because of the limit of literal expression. In addition, claim interpretation is critical issues to both patent applicants and interested parties. Therefore, interpretation of patent claims should be done in the way that it provides an appropriate technical scope of the invention and that it does not provide any unexpected damages to 3rd parties.
In this background, this article tries to find the trend in claim interpretation of the Supreme Court, and examines how the Supreme Court has referred to detailed description of invention or drawings during last 3 years. This will provide us insights regarding whether and how detailed description of invention should be referred to in claim interpretation.

참고문헌 (Reference)

1 田村義之, "특허침해소송에서의 공지기술의 항변과 당연무효의 항변(1)" (21) :

2 이수완, "특허청구범위의 해석" 특허법원 147-187, 2001

3 牧野利秋, "특허청구범위 해석에 대하여" 특허법원 1 : 1999

4 박재일, "특허성 판단 및 침해여부 판단시 기능식으로 기재되어 있는 특허청구범위의 해석기준’" 2008

5 특허법원 지적재산소송실무연구회, "지적재산소송실무(전면개정판)" 박영사 2010

6 특허청, "심사지침서" 2007

7 정차호, "기능식 청구항의 해석에 관한 소고" 2 :

8 장완호, "'구범위 해석의 이중성에 관한 고찰’, ｢특허법원 개원10주년 기념논문집｣" 특허법원 2008