민사소송절차와 영업비밀보호 －부정경쟁방지법상 비밀유지명령을 중심으로－

In a litigation for trade secrets, there exists a tension between protection of a trade secret and disclosure of the trade secret. The litigation needs to reveal trade secrets in some degree. If a trade secret is revealed in litigation, the owner would risk extinguishing the trade secret. The trade secret may not maintain the status of secrecy. On the other side, it could not be defended unless the trade secret is enough disclosed at trial. However, confidential relationship between plaintiff and defendant might be not always kept good. The competitor may abuse the trade secret acquired in the litigation procedure. The procedure can be the place to acquire the trade secret by the competitor. The recent Korea-U.S Free Trade Agreement has a provision on trade secret matter. On this respect, the Korean Intellectual Property Laws includung the Law against Unfair Competition have been revised to introduce the Confidentiality-Protective-Order. For violation of the judicial Order regarding the confidential protection of trade secrets acquired in a civil proceeding, there should be criminal sanction on parties to the civil judicial proceeding, their counsel, experts or other persons. The newly introduced protective order is expected to make the proceeding parties use a trade secret without fearing that the trade secret can be divulged for other unlawful purposes than in the litigation.