Patent Court Decisions
Title | [Patent] Nail Stickers Manufacturing Method Case (Patent Court Decision 2018Heo4874) | ||
---|---|---|---|
Date | 2019.09.26 | Hit | 361 |
Attached File | 8 2018Heo4874 Invalidation of Registration (Patent).pdf |
[Patent] Nail Stickers Manufacturing Method Case (Patent Court Decision 2018Heo4874)
Both inventions under Claim 2 and Prior Art 1 refer to “a method of
manufacturing nail stickers,” all of which are process inventions. A process
invention is an invention made up of a series of temporal steps for achieving
a specific purpose. In the process invention, the order of discrete elements
may cause a significant difference in working effects thus the temporal order
is an essential element of the process invention. Therefore, the inventions
under Claim 2 and Prior Art 1 are different from each other in their
composition in that there is a difference in the order of 'compression' and
'drying' elements as described above. Moreover, the invention under Claim
2 has the core technical idea of adopting the order of 'drying after
compression' as a means to achieve the goal of removing post-compression
air bubbles contained in the printed layer, flattening the sticker surface to
produce flat light, and preventing the smearing of ink, etc. It is difficult to
see the difference in the time-series arrangement of the ‘compression’ and
‘drying’ elements of both inventions as no more than a simple change of the
order, omission of existing steps, or replacement of other steps.
Ultimately, the difference in compositions of Claim 2 and Prior Art 1 is
substantial, and the resulting effects of the two are significantly different. Thus
the difference in the order of 'compression' and 'drying' of the two inventions
cannot be easily overcome by a skilled person.