부정경쟁방지법상 ‘기타 성과 등 무단사용행위’에 대한 비판적 고찰

Abstract

부정경쟁방지법 제2조 제1호 ㈚목의 부정경쟁행위가 2013. 7. 30. 법 개정시 도입된 지도 벌써 9년이 가까워지고 있다. 동 조항의 입법의도는 새롭게 발생하는 다양한 유형의 부정한 경쟁행위에 대하여 탄력적, 효율적인 규제를 위한 것이었다는 것이 입법자의 설명이었으나, 법조문의 모호성으로 인해 법적 성격과 성립요건 및 그 적용범위 등에관해 논란이 여전히 지속되었고, 2020년 한 해 동안에는 ㈚목의 부정경쟁행위 조항의 성격과 판단기준을 제시하는 5건에 이르는 일련의 대법원 판결이 내려졌음에도, 동 조항의 예측가능성이 불확실하다는 비판은 아직도 사그라들지 않고 있다. ㈚목의 입법이후 9년이 가까워 오는 동안 대법원 판결을 포함하여위 조항에 관한 판례는 어느 정도 축적되었으나 이에 대한 학계의 입장은 각양각색으로 혼란스러운 상황이고, 법률상으로는 ㈏목의 개정과 현행 ㈗, ㈘, ㈙목 등 새로운 부정경쟁행위가 추가되는 등 적잖은변화가 있었으므로, 현재 시점에서 새로이 내려진 최근의 대법원 판결의 검토와 함께 부정경쟁방지법의 개정내용을 포함하여 본 조항에서논란이 되고 있는 주요 쟁점을 다시금 검토하는 것은 큰 의미가 있을것으로 판단된다. 이에 본고에서는 ㈚목의 도입 이후 그 성립요건과관련하여 특히 논란이 많은 성과물의 범위 및 위법성의 판단기준 등의주된 쟁점을 살피고 관련된 판례의 비판적 검토를 통해 향후 ㈚목의바람직한 운용방향을 모색하고자 한다.

The year 2021 was the 60th anniversary year of the enactment of the Korean Unfair Competition Prevention and Trade Secret Protection Act (hereinafter referred to as the Unfair Competition Prevention Act). Korea’s Unfair Competition Prevention Act was enacted in 1961 taking the legislative formats of the Unfair Competition Prevention Act of Germany and Japan and listed the types of unfair competition activities such as causing confusion with another person’s goods or commercial facilities/activities, making false marks, activities causing the public’s misleading of the goods, and slander in business, etc. Currently, there are 13 types of unfair competition activities in the Act, including the new types of unfair competition activities in 2021: illegal use of data and unauthorized use of celebrities’ personal identification marks such as portraits and names. The Korean Unfair Competition Prevention Act has been adding the new types of unfair competition activities in the Act in order to regulate the continuously emerging unfair competition activities such as dilution, unauthorized entity’s registration or usage of other’s domain name, copying the shape of other’s goods, and to comply with Trademark Treaty and Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property. In 2013, the Unfair Competition Prevention Act legislated ‘any other acts of infringing on other persons’ economic interests by using the achievements without their permission’ in Article 2.1.(Pa). And also continuously added the new types of unfair competition activities in Article 2.1.(Cha) to (Ta) afterward. The reason for such frequent revisions of the Act in recent years was to overcome the limitations to regulate the various unauthorized activities that were not listed in the Act and to clearly define each activity in the Act. Now it has been nearly nine years since Article 2.1.(Pa) was legislated in the Unfair Competition Prevention Act on July 30, 2013. Article 2.1.(Pa) was legislated to provide flexible and efficient interpretation of the court to regulate the various types of newly occurring unfair competition activities. However, there is a skeptical view that the terms and standards of Article 2.1.(Pa) are vague. Even though there were 5 Supreme Court cases of Article 2.1.(Pa) issues and the Supreme Court decision indicated some explanations of the Article and application of the standards, the vagueness of the Article still remains. Regarding such debates among scholars and frequent revisions of the Unfair Competition Acts, this paper researches the related cases of the past 9 years and explores the main issues of the cases. Especially this paper focuses on the research on Article 2.1.(Pa), specifically studying the standard of interpretation of the scope of the other’s achievements, illegality, and other main issues.