간략한 조문과 등록 등 절차 부재에 따른 부정경쟁방지법 사건의 특징 －조문의 흠을 메울 바람직한 해석론 등－

Abstract

The Korean Unfair Competition Prevention Act (KUCPA) is a law with the highest rate of increase in related cases among Korean intellectual property laws in the past 20 years. However, since the content of the provisions is very brief with only 42 articles, in the actual trial, the courts and attorneys are in a desperate situation where they have no choice but to fill the gaps of the brief provisions by reasonable interpretation. In order to give a meaningful help to the desperate situation above, this paper tries to present its own rational interpretation guide, limited to the issues which are already or probably will be the most controversial in the related interpretation theory, not simply commentary article-by-article because of space constraints. The presentation of this interpretation guide largely consists of ① the area where the legal principles of the trademark law can be applied mutatis mutandis, ② the area that will receive help from all other intellectual property laws without being limited to the trademark law, and ③ the area that needs help from neighboring other Korean laws such as the civil law. First, in relation to the above ① area, since the items A to G in Article 2, Subparagraph 1 of the KUCPA are provisions that directly correspond to the provisions of the Korean Trademark Act (KTA), the principles of the KTA can be applied mutatis mutandis in many cases. A representative example is the doctrine of “acquisition of distinctiveness by use” stipulated in Article 33, Paragraph 2 of the KTA. The following issues fall under item the above ② area and are examined to provide interpretation guide: the issue of the transferability of the right (transferable if together with the substance of the business) and etc., the issue of the duration of the right (permanent except few cases), the issue of the subject to which the right belongs (except for trade secrets corresponding to the invention, generally belongs to the employer), and the possibility of establishing a security right (among various intellectual property rights, the most unsuitable IPR for security rights such as pledge). Finally, although there are many issues that will fall into the above ③ area, among them, the issue of ‘the base time for determination of well-knownness of a mark protected by items A & B of the KUCPA’ was examined. In Japan’s discussion on this issue, focusing mainly on the specific characteristics of Japanese Unfair Competition Prevention Act, it is explained that in the case of a claim for damages, well-knownness of the right-holder’s mark should be acquired by the time the other party starts using the mark, and in the case of a claim for injunction, it should be obtained by the end of the oral hearing. Such Japanese discussions were imported directly by Korea, and almost the same discussions in Korea are ongoing. However, the above discussion in Japan and Korea is fundamentally problematic in its basic approach. This is because such approach totally ignores the systematic connection with the related logic of the neighboring laws such as their respective civil acts, steadily built up over the years. In addition, a bigger problem is that some Korean IP professionals once again imported and deadly followed the corresponding previous discussions in Japanese IP law on the issue. In discussing specific issues of Korean intellectual property law, considerable cases is worrisome that they are discussing them just by collecting and analyzing foreign IP professionals’ discussions on the very same IP issues, ignoring the process of identifying and systematically connecting each discussion with the other Korean IP laws and also the neighboring laws such as Korean Civil Act which are closely related to Korean IP law. As a result, new complexity has been added to the already-exiting complexity of each issue of Korean IP law, and even more unfamiliar content is superimposed on top of the already unfamiliar content and finally the systematic connection with neighboring laws such as the Civil Act, as well as even with the corresponding discussion of the other Korean IP laws is increasingly disconnected. Finally, the overall fragmentation and isolation of each discussion of the entire Korean IP law is becoming too serious. The author is also well aware of the importance of analyzing related trends in foreign IP laws and has continued to research with comparative analysis. However, the more important thing is the need for integration of related discussions in the specific areas of IP such as patent, trademark, copyright etc., and for systematic connection with neighboring laws in the entire Korean legal system. From this point of view, this article clearly confirmed that the solving of the problem ‘the base time for determination of well-knownness of a mark protected by items A & B of the KUCPA’ should start with related discussions in the Korean Civil Act and then certain special treatment would be considerable to reflect the specific characteristics of KUCPA. On the other hand, another characteristic of the KUCPA cases stems from the very nature of the Act, the furthest from the registration and related procedure among all Korean IP laws including the Copyright Act. In this part, this paper thoroughly examined the following issues as follows. First, compared to other intellectual property cases such as patents, the status of our courts in dispute resolution is substantially strengthened. Second, there has been an increasing tendency of combining claims for copyright protection with claims of the KUCPA. Third, unlike in patent litigation, the defendant’s claim that it is only a prior-art shall be just a denial, not a defense, and the base time for determination is different.