A Study on Licensor's Obligation of Providing Licensed Technology and Licensee's Obligation of Paying Royalty in International Technology Transfer Contract

국제기술이전계약에서 라이선서(Licensor)의 실시권 부여와 라이선시(Licensee)의 실시료 지급의무에 관한 연구

Subject matter of international trade are various. They contain not only tangible assets such as goods but also intangible assets including service, technology, and capital etc. Technology, a creation of the human intellect, is important as it is the main creative power to produce goods. It can be divided into Patent, Trademark, Know-how and so on. These Technologies are protected by the national and international laws on regulations for the Intellectual Property Rights(IPR), since technology development is needed a lot of time and effort, and the owner of the technology may have crucial benefits for creating and delivering better goods and services to users and customers. Therefore, any licensee who wants to use the technology which other person(licensor) owns, he(the licensee) and the original owner(the licensor) shall make Technology Transfer Contract. Differently from the International Sales Contract in which seller provides the proprietary rights of goods for buyer, in the case of International Transfer of Technology Contract, the licensor doesn't provide proprietary rights of technologies with the licensee, on the contrary the right of using is only allowed during the contract. The purpose of this paper is to examine the main issues in International Transfer of Technology Contract. This author focused on the main obligations of both parties, namely licensor's obligation to provide the technology and licensee's obligation to pay the royalty. As every country has different local mandatory laws about Intellectual Property Rights(IPR) and these mandatory rules and laws prevails over the contract, the related rules and laws should be examined carefully by both parties in advance. Especially the rules and laws about the competition limitation in the local country of licensee and the economic union(like the EU) should be checked before contracting. In addition, the contract has much more complicate and delicate aspects than other international business contracts, so both parties should review carefully before singing the contract.