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| TITLE | Patent Court 2022Heo2530 Decided April 27, 2023: Confirmed 【Final Rejection (Patent)】 [full Text] |
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| Summary | |
| 【Main Issues and Holdings】 In the case where: Research Institute Party A filed an application for an invention titled “Protein for COVID-19 Antigen, DNA Fragment Coding the same, and Gene Vaccine Comprising the same”, and made corrections such as deleting or correcting claims twice during the examination by the Patent Office; however, the Patent Office examiner decided to reject the patent application on the grounds that the invention lacks inventive step even in the reexamination, and the Patent Examination Board also dismissed the request for a trial on the grounds that the invention lacks inventive step in the appeal against the decision to reject the reexamination; then, Research Institute Party A filed a lawsuit against the Commissioner of the Patent Office to request the cancellation of the decision. In this case, Claim 2 of the applied invention has the same technical field and purpose as the prior art, which is a paper published under the title “DNA vaccine protection against SARS-CoV-2 in rhesus monkeys”, and when comparing its components, there are some differences along with commonalities, but these differences can be easily overcome by a person skilled in the art by combining the prior art, and it cannot be recognized that it has a remarkable effect that cannot be predicted from the prior art, so it lacks inventive step and cannot be patented; in addition, if the scope of claims in a patent application consists of two or more claims, and if there is a reason for rejection of any one claim, the application must be rejected as a whole, so the applied invention is not at all patentable without having to look into the remaining claims. | |
