Official fees for a preliminary injunction action or a permanent injunction action would be small rather than significant. Those would be about US$400. A lawsuit to the Patent Court is an administrative lawsuit that seeks to review the decision of the IPT of KIPO. Official fee for such action to the Patent Court would be small, too (about US$400).
As to a lawsuit for damage compensation, official fees are correlated with the amount of claims. For the first instance lawsuit, a plaintiff must pay 0.5% of claimed amount as official fee. Accordingly, it could be considerable amount.
In terms of attorney fees, two options are usually used in Korea; Flat fee in lump sum or hourly charge based on actually spent time. Considering the unpredictable nature and complexity of patent infringement litigation, it is extremely difficult to estimate the total cost of litigation. Just as a rough estimate, it would be approximately US$150,000 ~ 300,000 for a district court action for a straightforward litigation case. In a big case with complex and difficult technology issues, it may cost much more. In addition, translation of court documents into English will increase costs accordingly.
Korean laws allow the prevailing party to claim court costs and legal fees from the losing party. Official fees and legal costs paid to a court are usually reimbursed in full to the prevailing party. As to attorney fees, however, the Supreme Court has a regulation that limits the reimbursement of actual attorney fees. For instance, for a PI case, a prevailing party may recover about US$3000 per instance from a losing party; not more than US$10,000 in total. However, the amount for damage lawsuit is correlated with the amount of claim and ration of winning. That may be quite different. At any way, it is safe to assume that the amount as a reimbursement of legal fees could be substantially less than the actual cost.
