Court Partially Grants Kyungdong Navien's Request for Preliminary Injunction to Prohibit Patent Infringement

Rivals in the domestic boiler market, Kyungdong Navien and Gyeongdong, are clashing over the technology of the ‘condensing boiler heat exchanger.’ This comes as the court ruling on the patent lawsuit filed by Kyungdong Navien was issued after about 11 months.

According to the boiler industry on the 4th, the Seoul Central District Court partially granted Kyungdong Navien’s injunction request to prohibit Gyeongdong from infringing on its condensing boiler heat exchanger patent.

Kyungdong Navien had filed an injunction request with the court in December last year, claiming that Gyeongdong had unauthorizedly copied its heat exchanger technology. Kyungdong Navien’s claim is that the heat exchanger used in Gyeongdong’s ‘Geokkuro Eco Condensing,’ released in August 2021, infringes on its patent. The heat exchanger is a key component that absorbs heat generated inside and heats the heating water. Kyungdong Navien developed the heat exchanger in 2018 with a structure that can achieve optimal thermal efficiency and has argued that Gyeongdong infringed on this patent.

In response, Gyeongdong argued that the four patents for which Kyungdong Navien filed the injunction request are either technologies already used in the boiler industry or technologies that Gyeongdong had been using first, but Kyungdong Navien registered the patents. The four patents were filed in 2018 and 2019, but Gyeongdong stated that it applied or developed further the heat exchanger it had independently developed in a national project in 2013 and already holds the original technology of the heat exchanger. In fact, except for one, most of the patents were invalidated by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, and the remaining ones are also undergoing procedures for invalidation, it added.

However, the situation has become complicated as the court partially granted the injunction request to prohibit patent infringement this time. The sale of products equipped with the heat exchanger in question is banned, and even products already sold could become problematic. Gyeongdong plans to prove the invalidity of the disputed patents.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.