모바일시대의 지적재산권 보호

The Protection of Intellectual Property Rights in the Mobile Age

The mobile era provides us many legal issues, especially in the field of intellectual property rights. The effective management of intellectual property rights is very important for the mobile-contents-related companies. Such companies should effectively enforce its patent rights. They are recommended to have programs to enforce patent rights. Pursuant to enforcement programs, the mobile-contents-related companies can assert preliminary or permanent injunctions, damages and measures to recover its business reputation as well as criminal sanctions. Taken into consideration that foreign companies employ many patent attorneys, the enforcement programs need to make attorneys-at-law available. Some provisions of the management regulation of the mobile contents related companies are recommended to amend in order to effectively exploit intellectual property rights. For example, the mobile contents related companies should consult and share a royalty with a high authority when it transfers its technologies. These provisions are not reasonable because they reduce the effectiveness of technology transfer. The US Napster case and the korean Soribada case should be noted in order to discuss the so-called peer-to-peer services and copyrights. The US Napster court rejected a fair use argument based on space-shifting. This was an argument that users who already owned an audio CD were simply downloading files to listen to music they already owned. The argument was rejected, largely on the ground that the users were simultaneously distributing the copyright material to the general public. The problem is not solved jet. The netizens should pay for the use of mp3 music. Because of mobile camera phone the protection of trade secrets is a very important issue. Trade secret is business information that is the subject of reasonable efforts to preserve confidentiality and has value because it is not generally known in the trade. Such confidential information will be protected against those who obtain access through improper methods or by a breach of confidence. The effective measures are very important to protect trade secret. Camera phone should not be allowed by entrance of factories or main document stores. There are also several legal issues in the field of mobile phone and intellectual property rights. We should try to get reasonable solutions against problems arising out of development of technology.