市場支配的 事業者의 排他的 DRM 搭載行爲의 競爭法的 評價

초록

Digital Rights Management(‘DRM’) is an important and useful measure for copyright holder in protecting his or her legal rights under copyright law. On the other hand, it may cause substantial foreclosure effect when it is implemented by a market dominant undertaking. The dominant wireless telecommunication carrier in question imposed its DRM software on mobile phones designed for its mobile telephone service and digital music files downloadable from its webpage. Korea Fair Trade Commission(‘FTC’) found that this conduct foreclosed competitors in the emerging digital music market from the dominant undertaking's large subscriber base and held it an abuse of market dominance in violation of Section 3-2, Monopoly Regulation and Fair Trade Act (‘Monopoly Regulation Act’). The Seoul High Court vacated the FTC's decision and the Supreme Court agreed in most parts. Most of all, both courts stick to the rule announced by the Supreme Court in POSCO (2007) and denied the ‘inappropriateness’ of the conduct in question. The Supreme Court set a high standard for finding abuses of market dominance under the Monopoly Regulation Act and courts have consistently been applying the standard in abuse of market dominance cases since then. In addition, a number of important and interesting issues related to competition law enforcement. Regardless of many commentators’ expectations, the Supreme Court, however, did not express any thoughts about competition law enforcement in the innovative and newly emerging digital music market. It did not say anything meaningful with respect to intersection between competition law and intellectual property rights, neither.

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