Precision medicine, also known as personalised medicine, is an emerging field in healthcare and seems to have a promising future as it accounts for 42% of new molecular entities which the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved in 2018. Since precision medicine aims to provide bespoke medical treatments based on individual patient's characteristics, it essentially incorporates diagnosis and treatment methods. Under Korean patent law and practice, treatment and diagnosis methods are not considered patent eligible subject matter. As such, it is necessary to circumvent restrictive eligibility requirements to obtain protection for precision medicines in Korea. In the past, although precision medicines can be pursued as a pharmaceutical/diagnostic composition claim, it was not easy to claim methodological aspects of precision medicines (e.g. dosage regimen) which were not considered as technical features constituting composition itself (Supreme Court decisions 2007Hu2926 and 2007Hu2933, rendered on May 28 2009).
