부정경쟁방지법상 상품형태모방규제에 있어서 “타인”의 의미와 청구주체

According to the Article 1 (i) of Paragraph 2 of the Unfair Competition Prevention Act, to be recognized as the imitated product, a product needs to correspond to a product manufactured by any other person. However, due to the meaning of “products manufactured by any other person,” the law does not specifically stipulate its contents, there is a risk that interpretation may vary depending on the case. Since the provision protects unregistered designs by way of prohibition of unfair competition act and it is desirable to make the claimant clear and simple to facilitate license agreement, the concept of claimant should not be too broadly extended in context of balance with other intellectual property laws which limit the claimant for rights to request prohibition of infringement. Korea has followed Japanese precedents and expanded interpretation without a clear legal basis. In particular, even though the violation of this regulation was changed to be under the subject of criminal punishment, an analogy or extended interpretation may violate the principle of criminal justice. Therefore, it is necessary to revise the law, such as clarifying the constitutional requirements of the Unfair Competition Act in order to help clear judgements in civil, criminal lawsuits and administrative investigations.