Daewoong (Daewoong Pharmaceutical Co.,LTD.) provoked controversy since it took advantage of patents of a professor on the condition of developing new drugs to successfully gain an amount of government budget, but it unilaterally stopped developing new drugs.
According to the court’s ruling, Daewoong did not give any deposit of technology patent until it lost the trial.
Daewoong(www.daewoong.com) proposed a joint development of new drugs to Professor Park at medical school in Hanlim University who applied for a patent for curing atopic dermatitis with Cordyceps militaris extract in 2011.
Using the patent of Professor Park, Daewoong made a bid for the development project of leading natural medicine in the world led by the Ministry of Knowledge Economy and earned 1.5 million dollars from the Korean government.
However, Daewoong dragged on and abruptly gave up the project in 2013.
The reason of the project being put on hold was that a toxic material was found in the patented.
In the same year, Daewoong applied for a patent after it found that Purine derivatives in Prof. Park’s patented material has efficacy to cure atopic dermatitis.
“It is highly doubt that Daewoong took advantage of my technology patent on purpose to win the government project and misuse the research fund,” the Professor Park Hyungjin, the original patentee, said.
He thought that his patent was used unjustifiably and filed a lawsuit against Daewoong to receive 65,000 dollar from payment on technology transfer.
Nonetheless, the court did not acknowledge Daewoong’s intentionality of stealing Prof. Park’s patent.
Daewoong explained that it has no reason to do something immoral only for research fund worth 1.5 million dollars given its strong presence as conglomerate in the pharmaceutical industry.
An official in public relation of Daewoong said, “We tried to develop better treatment for atopic dermatitis based on Prof. Park’s patent, but the toxic material found in the middle of research let us stop developing new drugs.”
The fact of the matter is that taxpayers’ precious money worth 1.5 million dollars from the government was used up to no avail.
