IP High Court Decision, 2021Heo3185 (Case Concerning a Heat Recovery Ventilator with Bypass Operation)

This case concerns whether the defendant’s challenged invention falls within the scope of rights of the patented invention held by the plaintiffs concerning the ‘heat recovery ventilator with bypass operation.’ The ‘configuration in which only supply air fans are operated and exhaust fans remained idle during bypass operation’ of the challenged invention was intentionally excluded from the scope of rights in the patented invention by eliminating related descriptions in the claims at the time of filing the patented application. This was to overcome the objections raised by the examiner of the Korean Intellectual Property Office during the examination process. Therefore, component 3 of the patented invention and its corresponding component in the challenged invention cannot be deemed equivalent.