개정 가맹사업거래의 공정화에 관한 법률의 주요쟁점 및 문제점

Abstract

Recently the fair franchise transaction act has revised. After revision of the act, there have been many problems arisen so far. The most important statement in the fair franchise transaction act is the responsibility to provide information disclosure statement. The person who requests the franchise offering circular is legally considered to be the franchisee candidate and thus the previous act did not have practical validity. The revised act requests to provide the franchise offering circular 14 days in advance to the conclusion of contracts without consideration of whether the franchisee requests the franchise offering circular or not. And also the act intensified the protection of business districts of each franchisee, and provided many regulations to protect the franchisees from the contract completion relevant damages. And the revised act also has intensified franchisee protection by providing the new regulations of the information release statement registration system and the franchise deposit refund system. This report agrees with the intent of this revised act to protect franchisees. However, there are still several disagreements. Above all, it is too long that the franchise offering circular should be provided 14 days in advance to the conclusion of contracts. In foreign countries including US, the franchise offering circulars are to be provided only 10 business days ahead the conclusion of contracts. In consideration of customs of contracts or franchise offering circulars provisions, 14 days in advance is a too immoderate regulation. Also, the franchise deposit refund system is to protect the franchisees from the possible damages by conclusion of contracts. Since the revised act sufficiently protects franchisees with the franchise offering circular registration system and provision of the statement to franchisees 14 days in advance to the conclusion of contracts, this new regulation on the franchise deposit refund system is just giving financial pressures to the franchisors that are usually small businesses. It is reasonable to regulate personal transactions to protect the economical weak. However, the regulations should be done in minimum level at which is basically necessary. The regulations that consider and correspond to the actual interests of franchisors and franchisees are seriously desired.