국내외 환경변화에 대응한 변리사제도의 개선방안

This article is to response to, the influences from the FTA, and the establishment of the law school system. The two great changes would cause much higher competition in the legal service market, and thus are assumed to bring many difficulties to the patent attorneys whose role is crucial to the sustainable development of the knowledge-based society. By analyzing the influences to the patent attorney system, this article makes the following three suggestions: (1) A specialist system of patent attorneys, which classifies the scopes of patent attorneys' specialty. This makes clients choose their agents in accordance with the character of their legal issues. This also improves the capability of patent attorneys in their specialty. (2) A reinforced specialist job education, which requires patent attorneys to study with the help of the Korea Patent Attorneys Association (KPAA) to maintain their capabilities to deal with new legal issues combined with the development of science and technology. (3) A qualification renewal system, which also requires patent attorneys to attend lectures prepared by KPAA and to pass a examination to renew their patent attorney qualification.