미등록 디자인 보호와 부정경쟁방지법

Because the designs are the appearances of the goods, they are easy to imitate. Usually the imitators sell cheap goods which are produced in a unlawful manner. It takes a long time for the designers to register their design rights to Industrial Property Office. So unregistered designer's right are needed to be protected. This paper purposes to many country's legal systems concerning unregistered design, and researches the imitation of goods' appearances under the Korean Unfair Competition Act. The Korean Unfair Competition Act S. 2 provides that the unregistered designs are protected in a restricted measure, there are many problems for the protection of designer's rights. Under the Korean Design Protection Act, review system and non-review system, secret design, prior design system, first application system are adopted. The ratio of registration per design right application is about 72%, and the review process of design right is conducted under novelty-oriented method, and the originality matters are not practically reviewed. The author suggests that Korean Design Protection Act only regulates the design which has the strong originality, and the Korean Unfair Competition Act provides unregistered design etc.