종업원의 직무발명과 영업비밀로서의 보호 -대학(원)생이 관여한 발명을 중심으로-

Unlike the situation in the other types of employee inventions, the invention joined by graduate or undergraduate students is sharply characterized by the fact that an advising professor and various incorporated entities such as a university, an industrial corporation, a state, and etc. are joining together. But here, whether or not the students can acquire the right for the invention will be decided by whether the provision of employee inventions in the Korean Invention Promotion Act will be applied to the relation of the student with the university or the professor, while the existence of the state or the industrial corporation has no direct effect on above acquirement. To solve the problem of moral hazard which often occurs in the student's invention, it may be reasonable not only to more widely recognize for an employer to secure his own legal interest by a mutual contract with his employee as long as the invention was made by the employee even if it was not in the scope of so-called 'employee inventions' but also to heighten the standard of compensation amount for the employee. In addition, it seems more necessary to perform a careful legal review of the sharing of trade secrets because the invention joined by the student is more difficult to be protected as a trade secret while the cases in which a invention is protected as a trade secret rather than a patent right will be more and more increased.