The Supreme Court of Korea has issued a landmark ruling clarifying the criteria for determining equivalence (infringement under the Doctrine of Equivalents) between a patented invention and an accused product or process. The Court held that, in principle, the function and effect of both inventions should be deemed substantially identical if the accused product or process resolves the exact technical problem that remained unsolved by the prior art. This critical precedent sophisticatedly refines the analytical principles applied in both patent infringement lawsuits and trials for confirming the scope of patent rights.
Source: Supreme Court of Korea Official News (https://www.scourt.go.kr/portal/news/NewsViewAction.work?pageIndex=1&searchWord=&searchOption=&seqnum=10910&gubun=4&type=5)