A former researcher of the Korea Tobacco and Ginseng Corporation(KT&G) has filed a massive civil suit against his former employer, claiming he was not compensated after having developed the world’s first e-cigarette technology. 

Kwak Dae-geun submitted the suit to the Daejeon District Court on Wednesday, seeking two-point-eight trillion won or around two billion U.S. dollars in compensatory damages from the tobacco firm. 

The amount Kwak is seeking is said to be the largest for an individual to demand in a lawsuit in the nation, excluding class action lawsuits. 

Kwak claims that even after he developed such a technology, a leading global tobacco company began to sell internal heating-based e-cigarette in South Korea from 2017 because there were no overseas patents for e-cigarette technology. 

The compensation sought by Kwak includes losses that were incurred after KT&G failed to apply for an overseas patent. 

The company, on its part, said Kwak has already been properly compensated for his invention and that he had accepted the payment and had agreed not to raise additional issues. It then warned of actively taking legal action should a former employee who has already been rewarded continuously make wrongful claims.