Lee International

Lee International recently secured a favorable ruling from the Intellectual Property High Court (IPHC) (Case No. 2024 Heo 14711) in an appeal of a decision from the Intellectual Property Trial and Appeal Board (IPTAB) that had upheld a final rejection of a patent application for a scleral laser microporation system.  This decision became final after the defendant, the Minister of Intellectual Property, did not file an appeal with the Supreme Court. 

The invention relates to a laser system for treating presbyopia by forming micropores in the sclera to improve the biomechanical properties of ocular tissue.  It is characterized by an advanced micro-control technique designed to ensure that at least 51% of the micropores exhibit “controlled partial rotational asymmetry” with respect to the center of the pattern. 

The IPTAB had concluded that the key technical feature of the invention could be easily derived from prior art (Prior Art 2), which generally discloses an “asymmetric arrangement.”

In response, Lee International demonstrated that the present invention is fundamentally distinct from Prior Art 2 in both objective and technical concept.  While the asymmetry in Prior Art 2 reflects a macroscopic and passive group arrangement intended to avoid anatomical obstacles, such as the rectus muscles of the eye, the present invention instead introduces an active approach that precisely controls individual micropores relative to the center of the pattern to enable effective stress distribution within the tissue. 

The IPHC accepted Lee International’s argument, finding that the invention’s precise control pattern could be easily derived from the macroscopic asymmetry disclosed in Prior Art 2 was based on improper hindsight reasoning. 

Meanwhile, the defendant newly asserted that the invention lacked an inventive step based solely on the golden spiral pattern disclosed in Prior Art 1. However, the court rejected this argument, holding that it is procedurally improper to introduce, at a later stage, a new ground for rejection to which the applicant was not afforded an opportunity to respond during the examination stage.

This case represents a successful example of overcoming the tendency to retrospectively undervalue an invention based on fragmentary terms (e.g., “asymmetry”) found in prior arts. It is also significant in that features relating to specific shapes or patterns were recognized, in the field of medical devices, as having inherent technical value beyond a simple design modification, and were accepted as a basis for establishing the inventive step of the present invention.