기술정보의 침해범죄에 관한 현행 법률 및 형사실무의 문제점 및 개선방안

Technology information is protected by the Patent Act if it is applied as patent application before the Patent Office and registered as a patent. On the other hand, a technology is protected by various Acts as long as it is kept secret or it satisfies the requirements of the respective Acts. It can be protected as a trade secret under the ‘Unfair Competition Prevention Act’, or protected as an industry technology under the ‘Industrial Technology Protection Act’, or protected as a national defense industrial technology under the ‘National Defense Industry Act’, hence an infringer being subjected to the criminal punishment. Moreover, the technology gets legal protection from the Criminal Act, which forms the base of the criminal legal system as the infringer being punished for the misappropriation clause. This legal system for the protection of the technology information of Korea bears significant defects and results in severe problems. For instance, the scope of the criminal responsibility deems to be wider than that of the civil responsibility under the Unfair Competition Prevention Act, which can be criticized as an imbalance between the criminal responsibility and the civil responsibility. Also in the Industrial Technology Protection Act and the National Defense Industry Act, the concrete requirements for the crime of the infringement are defined by notifications of the relevant administrative offices because the laws do not stipulate the concrete matters of the crimes, and since the terms used in the notifications are often unclear and can be broadly construed, the issue of the unconstitutionality can be raised. Also, the misappropriation clause of the Criminal Act is applied quite broadly and actively, which tarnishes the purpose of the respective Acts. Moreover, the current legal system is lacking in the protection of basic right of retired employees or the ‘the freedom of job’. It deems to be necessary to review the current legal system wherein the respective Acts apply concurrently and overlap with one another with regard to the substantially identical matter or 'the infringement of the technology information' and to search for improvements. In this paper, the laws and practices of the U.S.. EU and Japan are reviewed, defects and problems of the current legal systems of Korea are to be scrutinized, and improvements of the writer are to be offered.