“They Accepted the Proposal, Then Filed a Patent in the Names of the Chairman and CEO”
According to a comprehensive report by Edaily on the 7th, Mr. Lee (60), a state-certified packaging manager, recently filed a lawsuit against Crown Confectionery seeking 5 billion won in damages.
The origins of this lawsuit date back 20 years. In September 2006, Mr. Lee sent a handwritten technical proposal to the CEO of Crown Confectionery. The proposal outlined a solution to the problem of Cookdas breaking easily by widening the packaging width and adding vertical perforation lines.
Upon receiving this proposal, Crown Confectionery sent a thank-you letter to Mr. Lee that same month, signed by the head of the marketing department. In June 2008, Jang Wan-su, then CEO, sent a letter stating, “Thanks to our customers’ diverse feedback, Crown Confectionery’s Cookdas now features ‘Zipper Line’ packaging,” and noted that the company had won the “Korea Packaging Technology Society President’s Award” for that packaging. Subsequently, Crown Confectionery filed a patent application for the packaging in 2008, listing the CEO at the time as the inventor, and the patent was registered in 2010.
Mr. Lee claimed that, during this process, Crown Confectionery filed a patent application based on an idea he had proposed in 2006 without his consent. According to Mr. Lee, in February 2010, Crown Confectionery’s marketing director visited his home to inquire about compensation, but the company later notified him that compensation would be difficult. When Mr. Lee protested and continued to demand compensation, the company sent an official letter in 2011 stating that he could be charged with obstruction of business and defamation.
Mr. Lee’s side sent another letter demanding compensation in February of this year, but after Crown Confectionery responded with a certified letter stating that it had “no legal liability or obligation to compensate,” he began preparing for a civil lawsuit. Mr. Lee’s claim of 5 billion won is based on a certain percentage of the sales revenue from products such as Cookdas and Whiteheim, which incorporated the proposed packaging technology.
Crown Confectionery: “Technology Developed 10 Years Before the Proposal”
Crown Confectionery completely refuted Mr. Lee’s claims. The company stated that development of the Cookdas packaging technology had begun approximately 10 years before Mr. Lee submitted his proposal. The company explained that it began developing the core technology in 1996 to address Cookdas’s tendency to break easily and had been considering the introduction of “Easy Cut” since 2001. It also revealed that it had already registered and held a utility model related to horizontal perforation as early as 2005.
The company’s position is that the content proposed by Mr. Lee was merely “freely available technology”—technology commonly used in the confectionery industry at the time—making it difficult to claim patent rights.
They also stated that the principle behind the packaging technology actually implemented differs from Mr. Lee’s proposal. Crown Confectionery explained, “Mr. Lee’s proposal merely involved widening the packaging width to make cutting easier,” adding, “The ‘Zipper Line’ we actually implemented is a ‘universal packaging’ technology that creates a difference in thickness by heat-sealing a separate film inside the packaging material—the underlying principle is completely different.”
The company also cautioned against overinterpreting the thank-you letter sent to Mr. Lee. Crown Confectionery argued, “At the time, Mr. Lee made no mention whatsoever of being a packaging expert or of any demand for compensation,” adding, “It was merely a courtesy reply to customer feedback, but he misinterpreted it as ‘acknowledgment of his idea and a promise of compensation,’ which led him to begin demanding financial compensation starting in 2010.” The company further stated, “It is absurd for him to now claim that a technology we have been developing independently for 20 years is his own idea.”
Crown Confectionery has consistently maintained that the technology does not warrant compensation but finds it incomprehensible that a lawsuit was filed 16 years later. With the filing of this lawsuit, the company has decided it can no longer tolerate such irresponsible claims and has shifted its stance to a firm response. A Crown Confectionery official emphasized, “Since a lawsuit has been filed, we will retain a law firm and diligently proceed with the legal process,” adding, “To put an end to this unnecessary controversy, we plan to conduct a legal review regarding whether Mr. Lee’s actions constitute obstruction of business.”
