부정경쟁방지법상 영업비밀 보호 강화와 업무상배임죄의 적용

Protecting trade secrets is not only protects the interests of the company, but also protects the nation’s industrial and economic interests. In addition to Korea, the United States, Japan, and China, which have a lot of economic interests with Korea, have recently strengthened the protection of trade secrets through the revision of the law. In January 2019, Korea revised the Act on the Prevention of Unfair Competition and Trade Secrets, which greatly reduced the confidentiality requirements of trade secrets and greatly strengthened the penalties for trade secret infringement. The amendments to 2019 have removed the “reasonable effort” to reflect academics ‘criticism of applying the trade secrets’ confidentiality requirements too strictly. In addition to specifying the target of penalties for trade secret infringement and adding new types, the penalties were stronger than those for commercial offenses. Employees that were obliged to protect trade secrets have been punished for business misconduct as well as cases of violations of confidentiality obligations, as well as those that cannot be punished under the Unfair Competition Prevention Act in spite of the fact that there is a separate law for protecting trade secrets, there has been a question about whether it is appropriate to apply them to general crimes as Penal Code(breach of trust). In accordance with this amendment, we have examined in specific cases how business misconduct will be defined differently from the past.