부당한 공동행위의 집행 분야 확대(인사 분야)－최근 미국 사건을 중심으로－

The purpose of antitrust laws is to protect consumers by encouraging and preserving competition. The underlying theory is that competition leads to innovation, efficiency, and, ultimately, lower prices, higher-quality products or services, and greater output. To achieve the purpose, antitrust laws prohibits two or more competitors from agreeing to engage in conduct that unreasonably suppress competition. An agreement can take various forms,from explicit agreement to an implied one. Traditionally, antitrust enforcement has been focused on sales and marketing fields because illicit agreement to harm consumers is generally made by them – price fixing, bid rigging, market division are all mainly considered sales and marketing forces’ activities. However, the recent U.S. enforcement of antitrust laws has demonstrated that this is not the case anymore. Human Resources (HR) professionals may raise antitrust issues according to the latest cases – Detroit Medical Center in 2012 (exchange of employees’ compensation information among competitors) and Adobe in 2010(employee non-poaching case). No comparable case is yet found in Korea but two U.S. enforcement examples clearly showed that at least HR professionals are not safe from antitrust risks. Further, the statute languages of the Monopoly Regulation and Fair Trade Act (counterpart of the Sherman Act of the U.S.) also enable extension of the scope of antitrust enforcement.