프로그램 발명의 특허법에 의한 보호의 당위성

This paper explains that in many programs value as an invention is more important than value as a copyright and further proclaims that it is necessary to give proper patent protection on such programs. Regarding it, some persons misunderstand that a program without inventiveness can suddenly have inventiveness if the program is expressed as a computer-readable medium claim or if the program is included as “product”. Therefore, this paper, to terminate such misunderstanding, introduces jurisprudences of Korea, U.S.A., Europe, China, Japan, which all require inventiveness of a computer-readable medium claim. This paper suggests the following reasons for proper patent protection on program invnetions; first, Art. 22(2) of the Constitution demands protection of inventions under the Act; second, programers must be able to receive employee invention remuneration; third, normal programers are engineers and inventors; fourth, protection of a program under only the Copyright Act delays publication of a program invention; fifth, duplicative protection of a program under both the Copyright Act and the Patent Act is possible and even desirable; sixth, copyright protection on many program inventions may not be equivalent to proper protection; seventh, many programers consider patent protection important; eighth, government must restructure program industry as a high-value industry; ninth, trade secret protection on a program is in many instances improper. Conclusively, government must induce program industry lead 4th industry revolution by proper patent protection on program inventions.