earticle

영어

In accordance with the KORUS FTA(Korea-US Free Trade Agreement), the Trademark law were revised considerably. The revised Trademark law were effective as of March 15, 2012. The main issues of the amended law are protection of non-visual marks, the system of confirming intent to use a trademark and Statutory Damages. Firstly, even if sound or smell marks are non-visual, if they may be expressed visually by using signs, letters, devices or any other methods, they can be protected according to the revised trademark law. However, several problems regarding non-visual marks became to appear at the revised Trademark law and the Standards for Trademark Examination. Secondly, The revised Trademark law has accepted the system of confirming intent to use a trademark. Accordingly, a person who wishes to register a trademark shall use or intend to use his mark in the Republic of Korea. At present, even under the Korean trademark system based on the principle of registration, unless a person uses or intends to use a trademark in the Republic of Korea, he is not entitled to register trademarks by the revised Trademark law Art.3. However, several problems regarding the system of confirming intent to use a trademark became to be exposed at the Standards for Trademark Examination. Thirdly, in damage compensation suits, if it was difficult to prove the actual damages or estimate the amount of damages, substantive protection of a trademark owner was very difficult. But, according to the revised Trademark law, a trademark owner may claim damages of up to 50 million Korean Won, even if he or she cannot prove the damages clearly. In this case, the provision only statesthat the amount of statutory damages will be determined by the court. However, the provision lacks definite standards of determination in suit practice. Therefore, this paper is discussing on the above several problems and presenting the solutions on them.