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(1) Article 102 provides safe harbor for intermediaries from third party copyright infringement. The provision was amended twice in 2011 first to reflect the Korea-EU FTA and then the Korea-US FTA. EU Directive 2000/31/EC Section 4 “Liability of intermediary service providers” was almost exactly reproduced verbatim in the Intellectual Property chapter of the Korea-EU FTA, and the intellectual property chapter of the Korea-US FTA adopted the structure of DMCA safe harbor provisions. Therefore, it is no coincidence that the structure of Article 102 is very similar to that of EU Directive 2000/31/EC and DMCA. Paragraph (1) sets out specific conditions necessary for safe harbor for different types of Online Service Providers (OSPs). It classifies OSPs into four classes: mere conduits (subparagraph 1), caching (subparagraph...

(1) In this decision, the Supreme Court clarified that the safe harbor under Article 102 of the Copyright Act (before it was amended by Act no. 8852 on 29 February 2008) also applies to criminal liabilities. (2) The Supreme Court further explained the meaning of being “technically impossible” under Article 102(2). In this case, the defendants implemented filtering measures utilizing hash values and banned keyword lists. The Supreme Court found that those measures were not state of the art measures available and didn’t even work properly, and therefore the defendants cannot resort to the safe harbor under Article 102(2).

(1) This is an important decision regarding trade of counterfeit goods on online shopping malls, so called open-markets, where the service providers do not sell goods but intermediate between sellers and customers and receive commissions. The plaintiff was Adidas and the defendant was eBay Korea. Adidas filed an injunction against eBay for the sale of counterfeit goods on Gmarket and Auction, the largest and top grossing open-market in Korea. Adidas alleged that eBay has a duty under Article 44(2) of ICNA (note: This provision declaratively states the service provider’s duty to make efforts to reduce rights-violating material on its services, and is not to be confused with Article 44-2 that imposes on-demand takedown obligations.) to prevent circulation of counterfeits and demanded eBay to take several measures...

(1) Article 2 subparagraph 4 defines “mail order brokerage” as “the act of intermediating mail order between both parties to a transaction by allowing the use of a cybermall (referring to a virtual shopping mall established to transact goods, etc. by using computers, etc. and information communications facilities), or by other methods prescribed by Ordinance of the Prime Minister.” For example, Korea’s largest online shopping mall Gmarket owned by eBay Korea is a mail order broker according to the definition above. (2) According to Article 20 and 20-2, mail order brokers should inform consumers that they are not a party to a mail order, or they will be jointly liable if the seller caused financial damages to customers. Moreover, the brokers should make information about the sellers available to the consumers, or they...

(1) Article 82-4 is titled “Election Campaigns by Utilizing Information and Communications Networks.” According to paragraph (3), when the election commission of each level or any candidate has found any information in violation of the Public Official Election Act on Internet, it may request intermediaries to reject, suspend, or restrict processing of the information. Intermediaries should promptly comply with the request, and the intermediaries or posters of the information may file objection to the election commission within three days from the receipt of the request. (2) If an intermediary does not comply with the request once, it shall be imposed of a civil fine not exceeding three million won pursuant to Article 261(6)4. If it does not comply more than once, it shall be punished by imprisonment not more than two...