특허 양도인과 실시권자의 부쟁의무에 대한 연구

Abstract

There is a lot of debate both in the inside and outside of Korea about the possibility of invalidity claims made by either the licensee or the assignor of the patent rights. Most controversial are particularly the problems whether including "no-challenge" provision in license agreement is a misuse of the patent right or constitutes an anti-competitive behavior under the antitrust law and whether the licensee or the assignor is, based on the principle of trust and good faith, prohibited from challenging the validity of the licensed or assigned patent, even if there is no such provision. This issue consists fundamentally of conflicts between general principles of the contract law such as the principle of trust and good faith or the principal of estoppel and the purpose of the patent system to promote industrial development. The research will compare and analyze how the laws, judicial precedents and theories of Korea and Japan are implemented, applied and interpreted regarding such conflicts and conclusively will suggest a reasonable standard as to how to deal with these problems.