아이디어 보호 법제에 관한 연구 - 저작권법과 계약법의 조화론적 관점에서 -

Abstract

The emergence of new, diverse technologies and the rapid development of science require the broadening of the protection of intellectual property (IP) rights. It has been suggested that ideas that have previously been excluded from protection under IP law should be protected to a certain extent; one new provision was recently codified in the Unfair Competition Prevention and Trade Secret Protection Act (UCPA). Although this legislation takes a step forward, it does not seem to be the ideal solution for protecting ideas. As of now, there are few reference cases on idea protection; the UCPA protects “information,” which includes ideas. Existing discussions and laws look at idea protection from the perspective of copyright law and contract law and address all ideas uniformly. This approach forms an important foundation for establishing doctrines on the protection of ideas, but the protection of ideas is ultimately based on specific transactional relationships and trust relationships between parties. Therefore, the nature of the ideas to be protected must be differentiated according to the degree of transaction or trust in the relationship. In principle, ideas to be protected must be “original,” but the required degree of originality of an idea to be protected must be low in specific transactional relationships. The minimum degree of originality must be high in general transactional relationships. In the case of idea infringement in a specific transactional relationship, the other party must prove that the idea is not “original”; in case of a general transactional relationship, the idea owner should be required to prove that the idea is not “original.” This approach to the protection of ideas can be used to interpret the newly codified provision under the UCPA, and it will be also applied in future amendments of the UCPA.