특허 공무원의 전문성 제고를 위한 변리사 자격제도의 개선방안:특허청 경력 공무원의 변리사 자격 자동부여 제도를 중심으로

As the impacts of the patents and intellectual property rights on the national competitiveness have been increased, many nations have considered patent policy as top-prioritizing one and revised incentive systems for attracting talented people in scientific fields to patent administration system. In Korea, the career civil servants who have worked for Patent Agency for certain period of time have been partially exempted of some subjects of patent attorney examination. However, there have been some criticisms on the exemption in terms of lowering expertise of the patent attorney, discriminating the general examinees of the test, etc. Considering these criticisms and the development of the patent attorney qualification systems in the future, the author examines the return to the automatic entitlement of the patent attorney qualification instead of the partial exemptions of the subjects. The reasons are as follows: (1) the beneficiaries of the automatic entitlement of the quantification already have expertise that the qualification certifies; (2) the automatic entitlement of the patent attorney qualification will be expected to have better impact for attracting the talented people in scientific fields; (3) it will be helpful to provide better patent attorney services to demanders in the patent services markets. However, the re-adoption of the automatic entitlement of the patent attorney qualification should be accompanied by complimentary measures on the current patent attorney system such as the enforcement of maintenance training for patent attorneys, more sophisticated arrangements among positions in the Patent Agency, career development, and the qualification.