Newsletter
IPO ISSUED RULING ON TRANSMISSION OF CONTENT BY MEDIA
Newspapers, magazines, and radio and television stations frequently republish, publicly broadcast, or publicly transmit the works of others. Such users often have doubts as to whether such re-publication, broadcasting, or transmission may infringe copyright. To address these concerns, the Intellectual Property Office recently issued a ruling regarding the application of the proviso contained in Article 61 of the Copyright Act.
Article 61 provides that: "Commentary on cur-rent political, economic, or social affairs pub-lished in newspapers, in magazines, or online may be republished by other newspapers or magazines, or publicly broadcast on radio or television, or publicly transmitted online. But this shall not apply where an indication is made that republication, public broadcast, or public transmission is not authorized."
The gist of the IPO's interpretation is as follows:
Source of indication: An indication that a com-mentary on current political, economic, or social events may not be republished, publicly broad-cast, or publicly transmitted means a declaration of intent made by the owner of the economic rights in the work, or by a person instructed by the rights owner to make such a declaration. A declaration made by a person other than the owner of the economic rights in the work, or a person instructed by the rights owner to make such a declaration, does not have the effect under the above proviso of prohibiting others from using such material.
Method of indication: The Copyright Act makes no provision as to the method of such indication. However, to comply with the legislative intent of the proviso, such an indication should be objec-tively sufficient to allow users, at the time of using a specific commentary, to be clearly aware that the owner of the economic rights in the specific commentary has forbidden its republi-cation, public broadcasting, or public transmis-sion.
Attribution of source: When using the work of another in accordance with Article 61, a user should clearly state the source of the material used.
Thus, if material is used in disregard of an indi-cation prohibiting its use, or without attributing the source, such use is likely to violate the Copyright Act.