The Supreme Court of Korea ruled on February 28 in favor of LG Household and Health Care of Korea(“LG Household”), a domestic diaper manufacturer, saying it did not violate a patent of the U.S. firm Kimberly-Clark Corp.
The Supreme Court held that the disposable diaper with a leak-preventing flap produced by LG Household did not infringe on a patent owned by Kimberly-Clark and its local affiliate Yuhan Kimberly.
It was a long 8-year fierce lawsuit between two giants. Kimberly-Clark (more…)
Recently I got a question from a U.S. citizen living in the states. He has a Korean wife and a son. He’s currently living separately from the wife and son in Korea. The wife refuses his contact with the kid. He tries to get the custody but is not sure about filing a divorce law suit right away.
A child custody has two meanings in Korea. One is a right to make decisions for the child (so-called parental authority) and the other is right to foster the child.
Getting divorced is not necessarily required to have the “right to foster” under Korean law. He can request the Korean Family Court to designate him as the sole child fosterer, maintaining his marriage. The court will consider certain factors such as child’s age, past and current life style, occupation and standard of living of both parties and so on in deciding who is going to be a right fosterer in terms of the child’s welfare.
Regarding the expense of bringing up a child, if he is designated as a sole fosterer, the wife shall pay the certain proportion of total expenses of bringing up a child.
In a case where he fails to be designated as a sole fosterer by the court, he shall be entitled to have a visitation right according to Korean law. He can request the court to prevent his wife from interrupting his regular visitation to his (more…)
In January 31, the Seoul Central District Court ordered the Samsung Group to repay more than 2.33 trillion won ($2.46 billion) to the 14 creditors of its defunct Samsung Motors, which was the country’s biggest-ever financial civil lawsuit. Samsung Group said yesterday that it will appeal that court ruling.
Samsung Motors applied for a court-administered debt restructuring program in June 1999, and Chairman Lee Kun Hee announced his plan to inject private money. Two months later, Samsung signed a deal with the creditors to cover a 2.45 trillion won debt by the end of 2000. Under the agreement, Lee handed over his 3.5 million shares of the unlisted Samsung Life Insurance Co. to the creditors and promised to list the company. However the insurance firm never went public, and creditors were unable to convert all their share to cash due to the large volume. Creditors filed a lawsuit in December 2005, claiming 5 trillion won including penalties.
One of the biggest issues on this trial was the validity of the agreement between Samsung Group and the creditors. Samsung Group alleged that the agreement is void because it was entered under duress. However the court rejected it.
As I’m a lawyer, it was very interesting who would represent Samsung Group and the creditors. There (more…)
Recently we got a question about whether the Korean court permits a divorce filing even when both parties are foreign nationals. The questioner was in a situation where she lived in Korea but the spouse did not. Here is a short and general answer.
In principle, the Korean court accepts international divorce filing only when the defendant has a residence in Korea, even though there could be some excepts to this rule of thumb. The Supreme Court of South Korea, however, held that as an exception to this general rule the court should accept the divorce filing when (i) the plaintiff fails to locate the defendant or (ii) the defendant who has no residence in Korea answers the lawsuit filed in a Korean court.
Thus, if you do not know where the spouse currently lives but still need to get divorced, you can file a divorce lawsuit to a Korean family court. This is quite helpful to the foreign people who had been married to Korean persons but moved back to their home countries with the marriage not working well. Or a foreign person living in Korea whose spouse, who is also a foreigner, left Korea permanently can benefit from this judicial policy of Korean family court. In this regard, our office had represented a Canadian male and successfully got a divorce decree from