산업디자인의 지적재산권 보호방안

Abstract

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) includes industrial design, which refers to the 'decorative and aesthetic form of useful goods', in the subject of intellectual property protection on the premise of being applied or used in relation to industry. These industrial designs are protected by applied art works under the Copyright Act or design under the Design Protection Act. Applied art works are art works that can be reproduced in the same shape in an article, and must be distinguished from the article used, and contain design. On the other hand, under the Design Protection Act, design is a shape, pattern, color, or a combination of them, which refers to creating aesthetics through the eyes. In the end, both are substantially the same because they use what is expressed or designed on the article as a protective object, the problem of conflict of rights arises due to differences in overlapping protection or protection period. As to a way to solve such a problem, in Article 2-15 of the Copyright Act, needs to revise the meaning of “including design, etc.” to “including design, etc. expressed in goods” because it can cause confusion with the design under the Design Protection Act, and introduce design definition regulations to clarify the meaning of the design. In addition, the Design Protection Act needs to include applied art in the type of design and to introduce a definition that the applied art is limited to “something that can be distinguished from goods and recognize its independence”, in addition as to the design application, to revise the decision to reject or invalidate registration by prior applied art works. In order to solve the problem caused by the difference in the protection period between the two, it is necessary to establish a new regulation in the Copyright Act that limits the effect of copyright in the implementation of designs with expired protection periods.