시장지배적 지위남용행위로서의 불이익 강제행위에 관한 소고

The Supreme Court issued its first decision about the meaning of transaction refusal as an abuse of dominant market position and the conditions on unreasonableness of transaction refusal to be the abuse of dominant market position in so-called Posco case in 2007. About a year later, the Supreme Court made its second decision on the abuse of dominant market position by giving coercive disadvantage to other business operators for an abuse of dominant market position, which is referred to as T-broad case. Both activities belong to unreasonably interfering with the business activities of other business operators as the abuse of dominant market position, but the type and characteristics of them are significantly different. Nonetheless, the Supreme Court applied identical legal principles of the Posco case to in T-broad case. According to the conventional meanings of the phrases, however, unreasonable interference with business activities of others is more like unfairness of transaction rather than a restriction on competition. And the grounds of the regulations cannot be identical for each case. So the unfairness of transaction can also be considered as a ground of the regulations in addition to the restriction on competition applied to the Posco case. When the court examines a lawsuit case of new type of the abuse of dominant market position in the future, it is desirable to develop a criterion reflecting its own characteristics under the general principles of law interpretation.