(영문) 대법원 2020.1.9.자 2019마6016 결정 | 리걸엔진

Of the attached list 2 of the order of the court below, the part concerning the documents No. 6-1 and No. 2 shall be reversed, and this part of the case shall be remanded to the Seoul High Court.

The remaining reappeals are dismissed.

Reasons

The grounds for reappeal are examined.

1. Vindication of a trade secret in the request for restriction on inspection of trial records;

A. Concept of trade secrets

According to Article 163(1)2 of the Civil Procedure Act, if there is an explanation that the trade secret possessed by the party is included in the litigation record, the court may, upon the party’s request, limit the person who can apply for perusal, etc. of the part of the trial record to the party by decision. The above provision refers to the trade secret under Article 2(2) of the Unfair Competition Prevention and Trade Secret Protection Act (hereinafter “the Unfair Competition Prevention Act”). Since the above provision provides that the trade secret is "," the concept of the trade secret should be interpreted the same as the concept of the trade secret under the Unfair Competition Prevention

Article 2 subparag. 2 of the Unfair Competition Prevention Act before being amended by Act No. 13081, Jan. 28, 2015 requires that the trade secret be kept confidential by considerable effort. Article 2 subparag. 2 of the Unfair Competition Prevention Act requires that the trade secret be kept confidential, and Article 2 subparag. 2 of the Unfair Competition Prevention Act (amended by Act No. 13081, Jul. 10, 2008; Supreme Court Decisions 2008Do3435, Jan. 25, 2017; 2016Do10389, etc. also requires that the trade secret be kept confidential by considerable effort be kept confidential. Further, Article 2 subparag. 2 of the Unfair Competition Prevention Act (amended by Act No. 13081, Jan. 28, 201; hereinafter the amended Unfair Competition Prevention Act (amended by Act No. 13081, Feb. 28, 201) is applied only to the trade secret to be kept confidential by reasonable effort.

B. Article 163-2 of the Civil Procedure Act provides that any person may peruse and copy a final and conclusive judgment that limits the perusal, etc. of a final and conclusive court record (Article 163-2 of the Civil Procedure Act). While Article 162(2) of the Civil Procedure Act provides that a final and conclusive court record may be perused for a certain purpose, such as academic research, etc. (Article 162(2) of the Civil Procedure Act), only the party concerned or a third party who clearly expresses interest in the undetermined court record

However, in cases where the delivery of a document intended for another court record in an uncertain state is entrusted pursuant to Article 352 of the Civil Procedure Act, the court that keeps the pertinent court record bears the duty to cooperate therein unless there is any justifiable reason (Article 352-2 of the Civil Procedure Act). Accordingly, even a third party without an explanation of interest is requested to entrust the delivery of a document to another court record, if the document is requested for the entrustment of delivery of a document to a third party without an explanation of interest and is adopted, it would result in allowing the perusal of the court record in an uncertain state without restriction, unless there is any restriction such as perusal of court records pursuant to Article 163 of the Civil Procedure Act regarding the subject record. In light of the reality that the court is entrusted with the delivery of a document without designating the subject document and the applicant designates the necessary part after directly inspecting the subject document after the entrustment of delivery, the need to protect the

2. Review of the instant case

A. The record reveals the following facts.

1) The document No. 6-1 and No. 2 of the document, among the document, for which the applicant files an application for restrictions on access, is a contract entered into with a third party (hereinafter “the agreement between shareholders”). Article 17 of the agreement between shareholders, as well as the contractual party, must take all necessary measures so that the contractual party can comply with all the matters of Article 17. The contractual party imposes a specific duty on the director, executive officer, employee, agent, and subcontractor. On the other hand, the above provision imposes a specific duty on the contractual party, and limits the burden of the obligation within a reasonable period of time by prescribing that the said provision is valid for three years after the termination of the agreement.

2) On the other hand, the third party to the other case filed an application for the commission of document forwarding to the records of this case and adopted them.

B. As stipulated in Article 17 of the Agreement between the Stockholders of this case, if the content of the confidentiality clause is not limited to simply imposing an abstract and general confidentiality duty, and furthermore, it can be deemed that the other party imposes a specific supervisory duty to keep the content of the agreement confidential, such as imposing a duty to maintain confidentiality on its executives, employees, etc. who can access the relevant agreement, such as the method of management of the relevant agreement or the duty to maintain confidentiality, there is room to deem that there is a prima facie proof that there is a trade secret in relation to documents on which such a duty to maintain confidentiality is imposed. In addition, in determining whether a request for delivery of documents is included in the relevant litigation record, the issue of whether a trade secret is included in the relevant litigation record is not considered. Therefore, in this case, there is a high risk that a

Nevertheless, the lower court dismissed the instant application seeking restriction on perusal, etc. on the ground that the applicant’s lawsuit on the fact that trade secrets are entered in the agreement between shareholders is insufficient. Therefore, the lower court erred by misapprehending the legal doctrine on the vindication of trade secrets under Article 163(1)2 of the Civil Procedure Act and Article 2 subparag. 2 of the Unfair Competition Prevention Act, thereby adversely affecting the conclusion of the decision. The allegation in the grounds of reappeal assigning this error is with merit.

C. The lower court rejected the instant application by deeming that there was no evidence to deem the remainder of the documents except for the agreement between shareholders among the documents subject to restriction on perusal, etc., as the applicant did not constitute a trade secret entry. In light of the relevant legal principles and records, the lower court’s aforementioned determination is justifiable, and there was no error of law as otherwise alleged in the grounds

3. Conclusion

Therefore, the part concerning the contract between shareholders among the attached list 2 of the order of the court below is reversed and that part of the case is remanded to the court below for further proceedings consistent with this Opinion. The remaining reappeal is dismissed. It is so decided as per Disposition by the assent of all participating Justices on the bench.