Treatment of NPEs (Non-Practicing Entities) under Korean Antitrust Law

Legal disputes surrounding non-practicing entities (NPEs) or patent-assertion entities (PAEs) have not been common in Korea yet. Nonetheless, there are concerns raised regarding possible anticompetitive effects of their behavior. In 2014, the Korea Fair Trade Commission (the KFTC) amended its Review Guidelines on Unfair Exercise of Intellectual Property Rights (the IPR Guidelines), and newly included a section addressing competitive effects of NPEs exercise of intellectual property rights. The IPR Guidelines specifically list five types of activities as examples of NPEs abusive or unreasonable anticompetitive behavior. It remains to be seen, however, if NPEs potential anticompetitive behavior addressed in the IPR Guidelines would form a separate and lasting category, in particular considering the lack of clear evidence suggesting NPEs anticompetitive activities in the Korean market so far. Nonetheless and more broadly, the Korean antitrust enforcement authority appears to be ready to assert jurisdiction more proactively and aggressively than before in a case involving a patent-holders exercise of its rights, and the review of relevant court cases suggests that the court is in general willing to grant jurisdiction

Cultural Values and the Korean Negotiator

Culture has an inarguable role in shaping negotiation. Negotiators interests, priorities, and strategies are affected by their culture. Each culture shares some similar elements with other cultures while also having its own unique traits. These characteristics can manifest themselves in negotiation behaviors in interesting ways. Korean culture seems to share similar values with cultures of its neighbors, most notably of China and Japan, but it also has differences that emerge with some unique negotiation strategies. This article summarizes and reports modern theories and research results and tries to evaluate how Korean culture affects some of the negotiation styles commonly observed among Korean negotiators

Korea's Newly Enacted Unified Bankruptcy Act: The Role of the New Act in Facilitating (or Discouraging) the Transfer of Corporate Control

Korea recently enacted the Unified Bankruptcy Act. It aims to streamline existing bankruptcy procedure by consolidating various statutes governing bankruptcy into a single statute. Prior to the current enactment, when a company was in distress, it could restructure itself and continue its operation through corporate reorganization or through composition and, during the reorganization procedure, the incumbent manager was often discharged. Under the new statute, a single type of rehabilitation proceeding is available for a distressed company and the incumbent manager is generally retained as the receiver. This article reviews the current bankruptcy regime in Korea and argues that this change has a risk of being used as an entrenchment device for incumbent managers. In a country where control transfer rarely takes place, the transfer of corporate control would become even more difficult. Further, this article argues that in order to ameliorate this risk, it would be desirable to require a sales process once a distressed company is in corporate bankruptcy proceedings

Teaching Law and Economics in Korea

This article provides an overview of the current status of the Law and Economics education in Korea. In Korea, a course in Law and Economics was first offered in mid-1980s at Seoul National University, and since then, academic and teaching interests have been growing steadily. Based on the results of an informal survey on course offerings, we describe what is being taught and discuss challenges that the field is facing in Korea. Major pedagogic challenges include (i) insufficient supply of instructors and researchers who have background knowledge of both law and economics; (ii) lack of textbooks written in the Korean language dealing with Korean legal issues; and (iii) lack of Korean court cases and other materials suited for classroom discussions. Recent introduction of the new postgraduate professional legal education system is the biggest factor that will have a significant impact on the prospect of Law and Economics education in Korea. While interests among students have increased considerably, the problem of the limited supply of researchers in the field remains unsolved. The field should still provide convincing evidence to the traditional legal academia that Law and Economics is relevant and indeed useful in analyzing todays difficult legal issues that Korea has to deal with.

Rule or Standard: The De-Identification of Personal Information in Korea

Korea is a data-rich country with huge potential in this era of the data-driven economy. Nonetheless, it is unclear if the country is actively utilizing its potential. A central reason for this hesitancy appears to be related to Koreas strict privacy law regime. In an effort to encourage utilization of data, the Korean government issued multi-agency de-identification guidelines in 2016. The guidelines rely heavily on the statistical concept of k-anonymity. In the context of academic discourse distinguishing between rules and standards, the adoption of k-anonymity can be identified with the adoption of a rule. By analogy, employing the concept of k-anonymity is akin to imposing the same speed limit in all cases, regardless of road conditions such as the traffic situation, time, and number of lanes. On the other hand, a standard would demand that drivers drive at a reasonable speed. As such, while a rule is simpler and easier to follow, a standard could be adapted to suit diverse circumstances. This article suggests that Korea needs to adopt a risk-based approach for de-identifying personal information and argues that a risk-based approach would be predicated upon providing a suitable standard, not a rule