earticle

영어

Competition policy and intellectual property rights(IPRs) have evolved historically as two separate systems of law. Each has its own legislative goals and methods of achieving these goals. There are a considerable overlaps in the goals of the two systems of law because both are aimed at promoting innovation and economic growth. Yet there are also potential conflicts owing to the means used by each system to promote those goals. These conflicts have often arisen in the process of abuse control of intellectual property rights. In recent decades, competition authorities and courts have prohibited conduct by intellectual property owner which was otherwise lawful under intellectual property legislation, because it contravened the rules of competition law. This has occurred in four main spheres of activity of IP owners. First, cases have been brought by the competition authorities to place limits on the anti-competitive commercial conduct of individual owners of IPRs where they protect a market standard or de facto monopoly. The competition issue presented in these cases has generally been the IP owner’s exclusionary conduct towards innovators and potential competitors on markets which are secondary to and dependent upon an IPR protected industrial standard or de facto monopoly. The anti-competitive conduct has tended to take the form of a ‘refusal to deal’, a tie-in, or illegal ‘bundling’. Secondly, the competition authorities have created a detailed framework of regulation for certain terms of bilateral IPR licensing agreements, whether by means of official guidelines or legislation. Thirdly, the practices of collecting societies, R&D agreements and patent and technology pools have raised the issue of the appropriate treatment of cooperation between competitors in IP related fields under the competition rules. Finally, in the field of mergers and acquisitions, the owners of IPRs have found that competition authorities have intevened on occasion to limit IPR owners from acquiring competing technologies as well as to require compulsory licences of IPRs to third parties as a condition of merger approval. In many jurisdictions, the abuse of intellectual property rights have been controlled by two ways. The one is by private lawsuits between interested parties in court based on the intellectual property law, the other is by competition authorities based on competition law. However, in Korea, the abuse of intellectual property rights has been mainly controlled by competition law, for example, Samsung Electronics v. Apple case and Qualcomm case, as the abuse control by private lawsuit has not been so active as in other jurisdictions. In result, the abusive conduct of intellectual property owners has not been effectively controlled in Korea. In order to enhance the efficiency of abuse control of intellectual property rights in Korea, it is highly recommended to encourage the abuse control of intellectual property rights by private lawsuit, and to elaborate the public abuse control by competition authorities through the active execution of private abuse control.

한국어

시장경제에 있어서는 경쟁과 지식재산권이 창작이나 기술개발 또는 혁신을 통한 경제성장과 복지증진의 원동력이 되고 있기 때문에, 독점규제법은 자유롭고 공정한 경쟁을 촉진하기 위하여 노력하고 있으며, 지식재산권법은 창작이나 기술개발 또는 혁신에 참여한 자의 인센티브를 보장하기 위하여 노력하고 있다. 그런데 지식재산권의 행사가 제 3자의 공정한 이용을 방해 또는 배제하거나 자유로운 경쟁이나 공정한 거래를 제한 또는 저해함으로써 지속적인 후속혁신을 어렵게 하는 등 그 권리가 남용될 경우에는 이를 제한할 필요가 있다. 그리고 그 방법으로는 통상 지식재산권법에 의한 남용통제와 독점규제법에 의한 통제가 널리 사용되고 있는데, 미국과 유럽에서는 양자가 모두 적극적으로 활용되고 있는데 반하여, 우리나라에서는 독점규제법에 의한 남용통제는 비교적 활발하게 이루어지고 있으나, 지식재산권법에 의한 남용통제는 적극적으로 이루어지지 않고 있다. 그런데 이러한 방법으로는 지식재산권을 둘러싼 분쟁에 있어서 사적인 당사자들 간의 권리주장을 통하여 공공정책에 위반한 지식재산권의 행사가 제한될 수 있는 가능성은 매우 낮을 수밖에 없다. 따라서 우리나라에서 지식재산권의 남용에 대한 통제의 효율성을 제고하기 위해서는 독점규제법에 의한 남용통제 뿐만 아니라, 지식재산권법에 의한 남용통제도 적극적으로 활용할 필요가 있으며, 양자가 상호보완적인 관계를 유지하면서 지식재산권의 남용을 억제함으로써 지속적인 후속혁신의 촉진을 도모하고, 나아가 사회복지의 증진에 이바지하도록 노력할 필요가 있을 것이다.