일본의 영업비밀보호제도의 개정에 대한 비교법적 연구

Abstract

Provisions for the protection of trade secret is contained within “Unfair Competition Prevention Act” in Japan and is very similar to Korean legal system for the protection of trade secret. Trade secret protection system in Japan revised many times and on the one hand contents on the latest revision of Unfair Competition Prevention Act have benchmarked partial contents of Trade secret protection system in Korean Unfair Competition Prevention Act. But on the other hand, reviewing the overall trends, Japanese government has pushed actively policies for preventing powerfully acts of unfair competition against trade secret(“acts of the infringement of trade secret” in Korea) and strengthening the protection of trade secret substantially by accepting more powerful system than that of Korea. Especially, Japanese Unfair Competition Prevention Act revised in 2015 includes setting the distribution of things produced by the infringement of trade secret as a category of the infringement of trade secret, raising the maximum limit of monetary penalty applied by the infringement of trade secret, confiscating randomly criminal proceeds acquired by the infringement of trade secret, relaxing the burden of proof of owners of trade secret in the infringement of trade secret by applying presumption of production, etc. through the use of trade secret and doubling the period of exclusion of the right to request prohibition of the infringement of trade secret against the unfair use of trade secret. And it will be considerably effective for the substantial protection of trade secret in Korea that Korean Unfair Competition Prevention Act accepts the above contents of Japan. And it is also necessary that Korean government makes Guidelines for the Management of Trade Secret, which will not settle disputes afterhand by the infringement lawsuit of trade secret but prevent disputes about trade secret beforehand as the case of Japan. In conclusion, it is necessary that Korean Unfair Competition Prevention Act accepts actively those of japanese system that can help the protection of trade secret in Korea by analyzing the revised contents of the trade secret protection system in Japan.