A Study on the Main Obligations in Entering into the International Franchising Agreement

국제가맹계약시 당사자의 주요의무에 대한 소고

Domestic franchised businesses have been showing relatively fast growth, but the growth is expected to slow down as in those developed countries. In face of this changing market environment, domestic franchisers will have to turn their eyes abroad to achieve sustainable growth. On the other hand, more international franchisors could pursue expanding into the Korean market due to economic or strategic reasons in their home countries. In general, enterprises are faced with several barriers when entering foreign markets by franchising their operation. Issues relating to such entry barriers can be broadly classified into legal and managerial. To begin, international franchising necessitates enterprises to handle various aspects of legal issues. There are no internationally unified rules for franchise agreements as in international goods purchase contracts. This forces franchisors to have deep knowledge of concerned regulations and practices of each of the individual target countries, in particular franchising practices which differ from those of their own countries in terms of rights and obligations of the involved parties. Having regard to this situation, this study reviewed the EU's PEL CAFDC and other domestic and overseas regulations governing franchising. From the results, several contractual obligations were derived that need to be taken into account when handling the issues around the international franchise agreement. In closing this paper mainly having in mind enterprises in various business lines seeking to expand into international franchising, some unmet needs are worth commenting. First, there is an urgent need to establish practical guidelines along with the model agreement addressing the issues of international franchising in the absence of any unified international rules. Second, to meet the first need above, it is needed that the relevant authorities conduct a comprehensive review of the existing franchising regulations available across overseas countries and, based on the results, embark on gathering good common elements in the existing franchising regulations in individual countries, ultimately developing the best possible guidelines and examples.