• The Korean Society of Law and Medicine
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.295-316
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• 2011

If the medical staff privileges, which mean the eligibility to practice at open hospitals, are excluded in the United States, antitrust claims based on the violation of the Sherman Act have been raised a lot. The proliferation of these lawsuits in the United States, which are characterized as antitrust lawsuits, can be understandable situation. The reason is because doctors who don't belong to specific hospitals are seriously damaged, if the medical staff privileges are excluded and doctors cannot use facilities of open hospitals. In order to decide to allow the privileges of certain doctors, hospitals have to rely on peer review to maintain high quality of medical services, and it is not easy to find alternative of peer review in the professional areas like healthcare. However, there are possibilities that members of the peer review can abuse power to unfairly exclude privileges of potential competitors. In this sense, it is asserted in the U.S. antitrust lawsuits that the restraint of medical staff privilege can be the illegal restraint of trade in violation of section 1 of Sherman Act and can be monopolization or an attempt to monopoly by hospitals in violation of section 2 of Sherman Act. As Korea adopted open hospital system quite recently, there is still no case related with the exclusion of medical staff privileges. However, medical staff privilege system of Korea is not different from that of the United States in principle. Thus, the U.S. jurisprudence on the exclusion of medical staff privileges can be referred in the interpretation of "practice that interferes with or restricts the activities or contents of the business" based on Article 19.1.9 of Monopoly Regulation and Fair Trade Law of Korea.

• The Korean Society of Law and Medicine
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.75-98
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• 2018

Recently, the antitrust tribunal of Seoul High Court revoked the disposition of Korea Fair Trade Commission(hereafter 'KFTC'). While KFTC determined that the restriction of Korea Pediatrician Association violated article 26 of the Monopoly Regulation and Fair Trade Act(Korean antitrust law), Seoul High court viewed that KFTC failed to prove the compulsory measures and the restraint of competition required in article 26. The 'restriction' of article 26 should be interpreted as 'excessive restriction'. Since entrepeneurs' organization is allowed to limit its member's activities, KFTC could regulate entrepeneurs' organization on a very exceptional basis. In addition, though entrepeneurs' organization did not use compulsory measures to enforce its resolution, its 'excessive restriction' could fit into the notion of 'restriction' of article 26. Under the current medical care system, the price of medical care is decided by Korean government. Therefore the restriction of Korea Pediatrician Association is not likely to have effect on the price. However, the resolution of Korea Pediatrician Association was aimed to decrease the supply of medical care. Therefore the resolution is capable of having effect on the competition. In this sense, though KFTC failed to submit direct evidence to support the decrease of quantity, there could be possibility of restraint of competition. The Seoul High Court's decision has important implications. The leading case on restraint of competition(Supreme Court 2002Du8628, Posco case) was delivered in 2007. However the remaining issue such as the standard and scope of restraint of competition is not clear. Through reappeal case of this decision, Supreme Court has to decide the line between competition and its restraint.

• Korean Journal of Veterinary Service
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.129-154
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• 2006

Last year, over 800 Australian live cattle were imported, underwent quarantine procedure for one month in the port of Incheon and Busan and distributed to general farm house holds in Gyeongju city, Gyeongbuk province, and Gimhae city, Namhae county, Gyeongnam province. But Hanwoo association took violent actions to prevent from entering the country for fear that the imported live cattle would destroy the 'Hanwoo industry', and in turn leads to the collapse of the industry. In Australia, national animal protection body 'Animals Australia' investigated the level of cruelty involved in this trade and made a report 'The death file'. Australia governments drive to expand Its market for 'live animal exports' and it has resulted in a corresponding increase In casualties associated with the long-haul overseas trade in live livestock animals over the past years. After the stress of transportation, all the surviving cattle and sheep face death on foreign soil, many into countries which have no animal welfare laws or, at best, inadequate laws. They will usually be killed without pre-stunning and often even without adequate restraint facilities. The result is inherent and persistent suffering. West Australian(WA) Police acting on behalf of the West Australian Government and the Office of the WA State Solicitor have laid animal cruelty charges against a leading WA live export company for breaching the WA Animal Welfare Act. With the aim of eventually substituting it for the live sheep trade, the Senate Select Committee on Animal Welfare (SCCAW) recommended that the Federal Government 'promote and encourage the expansion of the refrigerated sheep meat trade to the Middle East and other countries'. Animal welfare standards have been improved time after time, there is another incident, another public outcry, another inquiry and more assurances.

• The Korean Society of Law and Medicine
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.177-219
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• 2016

A commercial advertisement is not only a way of competition but also a medium of communication. Thus, it is under the constitutional protection of the freedom of business (article 15 of the Constitution) as well as the freedom of press [article 21 (1) of the Constitution]. In terms of the freedom of business or competition, it should be noted that an unfair advertising (false or misleading advertisement) can be regulated as an unfair competition, while any restraint on advertising other than unfair one might be doubted as an unjustifiable restraint of trade. In terms of the freedom of press or communication, it is important that article 21 (2) of the Constitution forbids any kind of (prior) censorship, and the Constitutional Court applies this restriction even to commercial advertising. In this article, the applicability of these schemes to advertising of the so-called learned professions, especially physician, are to be examined, and some proposals for the reformation of the current regulatory regime are to be made. Main arguments of this article can be summarized as follows: First, the current regime which requires advance review of physician advertising as prescribed in article 56 (2) no. 9 of Medical Act should be reformed. It does not mean that the current interpretation of article 21 of the Constitution is agreeable. Though a commercial advertising is a way of communication and can be protected by article 21 (1) of the Constitution, it should not be under the prohibition of censorship prescribed by article 21 (2) of the Constitution. The Constitutional Court adopts the opposite view, however. It is doubtful that physician advertising needs some prior restraint, also. Of course, there exists severe informational asymmetry between physicians and patients and medical treatment might harm the life and health of patients irrevocably, so that medical treatment can be discerned from other services. It is civil and criminal liability for medical malpractice and duty to inform and not regulation on physician advertising, to address these differences or problems. Advance review should be abandoned and repelled, or substituted by more unproblematic way of regulation such as an accreditation of reviewed advertising or a self-regulation preformed by physician association independently from the Ministry of Health and Welfare or any other governmental agencies. Second, the substantive criteria for unfair physician advertising also should correspond that of unfair advertising in general. Some might argue that a learned profession, especially medical practice, is totally different from other businesses. It is performed under the professional ethics and should not persue commercial interest; medical practice in Korea is governed by the National Health Insurance system, the stability of which might be endangered when commercial competition in medical practice be allowed. Medical Act as well as the condition of medical practice market do not exclude competition between physicians. The fact is quite the opposite. Physicians are competing even though under the professional ethics and obligations and all the restrictions provided by the National Health Insurance system. In this situation, regulation on physician advertising might constitute unjustifiable restraint of competition, especially a kind of entry barrier for 'new physicians.'

• International Journal of Control, Automation, and Systems
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• v.1 no.4
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• pp.474-483
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• 2003

Belt drives provide freedom to position the motor relative to the load and this phenomenon enables reduction of the robot arm inertia. It also facilitates quick response when employed in robotics. Unfortunately, the flexible dynamics deteriorates the positioning accuracy. Therefore, there exists a trade-off between the simplicity of the control strategy to reject time varying disturbance caused by flexibility of the belt and precision in performance. Resonance of the system further leads to vibrations and poor accuracy in positioning. In this paper, accurate positioning of a belt driven mechanism using a feed-forward compensator under maximum acceleration and velocity constraints is proposed. The proposed method plans the desired trajectory and modifies it to compensate delay dynamics and vibration. Being an offline method, the proposed method could be easily and effectively adopted to the existing systems without any modification of the hardware setup. The effectiveness of the proposed method was proven by experiments carried out with an actual belt driven system. The accuracy of the simulation study based on numerical methods was also verified with the analytical solutions derived.

• Journal of Arbitration Studies
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.41-65
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• 2010

It is a matter for debate that which types of dispute may be resolved by arbitration. This problem is concerning the arbitrability of the subject-matter of a dispute. National laws establish the domain of arbitration. Each state decides which matters may or may not be resolved by arbitration in accordance with its own political, social and economic policy. In response to complexity and diversity of a social phenomenon, the dispute also is various, therefore can not be settled efficiently by means of court adjudication to which applies a law strictly. To overcome such problems we are going to seek to make use of arbitration. According to Korean Arbitration Act Art. 3 (1), any dispute in private laws would be the object of arbitral proceedings. For the promotion of fair and free competition, it is increasingly wide-ranging antitrust legislation across the world. It is matter for debate what can an arbitral tribunal do when confronted with an allegation that the contract under which the arbitration is brought is itself an illegal restraint of trade or in some other way a breach of antitrust law. The underlying question is how to accommodate the conflicting congressional policies favoring resolution of private controversies by arbitration and encouraging private suits to protect the public interests served by the antitrust laws. It is necessary to inquire into the arbitrability of antitrust issues on case-by-case basis, because the types of them are quite diverse. If antitrust issues are the dispute in private laws and the contracting parties agreed to submit to arbitration disputes which have arisen or which may arise between them in the antitrust issues, the antitrust disputes are arbitrable. Not only international antitrust disputes but also domestic antitrust disputes are capable of being resolved by arbitration. When the public interests in the enforcement of antitrust legislation are asserted, it is possible to justify the annulment or the refusal of the recognition or the enforcement of an arbitral award that ignores public policy as a matter of it.

• The Korean Society of Law and Medicine
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.175-209
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• 2019

The bundled discounting which the dominant undertakings engage in is problematic in terms of competition restraint. Bundled discounts generally benefit not only buyers but also sellers. Specifically, bundled discounts usually costs a firm less to sell multiple products. In addition, Bundled discounts always provide some immediate consumer benefit in the form of lower prices. Therefore, competition authorities and courts should not be too quick to condemn bundled discounts and apply the neutral and objective standard in bundled discounting cases. Cascade Health v. Peacehealth decision starts ruling from this prerequisite. This decision pointed out that the dominant undertaking can exclude rivals through bundled discounting without pricing its products below its cost when rivals do not sell as great a number of product lines. So bundled discounting may have the anticompetitive impact by excluding less diversified but more efficient producers. This decision did not adopt Lepage case's standard which does not require the court to consider whether the competitor was at least as efficient of a producer as the bundled discounter. Instead of that, based on cost based approach, this decision said that the exclusionary element can not be satisfied unless the discounts result in prices that are below an appropriate measures of the defendant's costs. By adopting a discount attribution standard, this decision said that the full amount of the discounts should be allocated to the competitive products. As the seller can easily ascertain its own prices and costs of production and calculate whether its discounting practices exclude competitors, not the competitor's costs but the dominant undertaking's costs should be considered in applying discount attribution standard. This case deals with bundled discounting practice of multiple healthcare services by the dominant undertaking in healthcare market. Under the Korean healthcare system and public health insurance system, the price competition primarily exists in non-medical care benefits because public healthcare insurance in Korea is in combination with the compulsory medical care institution system. The cases that Monopoly Regulation and Fair Trade Law deals with, such as cartel and the abuse of monopoly power, also mainly exist in non-medical care benefits. The dominant undertaking's exclusionary bundled discounting in Korean healthcare markets may be practiced in the contracts between the dominant undertaking and private insurance companies with regards to non-medical care benefits.