한미 FTA 협정 저작권 분야 주요내용과 국내이행

Analysis of Copyright Issues of the KORUS FTA and Its Domestic Implementation in Korea

The current government of the President Roh drives an FTA-oriented policy very aggressively. On April 2, the Korean FTA negotiation with the USA was completed, and signed by the ministers of the each contracting parties on June 30. The consent processes by the Korean National Assembly and US Congress, and ratifications by the both parties' Presidents remain to be seen. For implementing the result of the KORUS FTA, Korea has to revise and amend the existing copyright laws in the near future. This paper discusses the copyright related negotiation result of KORUS FTA, and tries to find out how to implement Korea's obligations on that area. Part Ⅱ introduces the result of the KORUS FTA negotiation briefly, and then examines issues which revealed a sharp conflict of opinions during the negotiation. In Part III, the detailed contents of the KORUS FTA provisions are analyzed, and the FTA related copyright provisions of Korean and the US Copyright Acts are compared. Finally, this paper adds some suggestions for the domestic implementation of the FTA in Part IV. It is the time to establish our philosophy on intellectual properties. In the current aggressive FTA era, it could be an opportunity to withdraw our passive attitude towards the protection of intellectual properties. When we revise Korean copyright laws, we also have to consider its impact on the possible conclusion of Korea-China FTA and future negotiations. Considering our position in the world society, we should talk about an adequate equilibrium with the interested parties sincerely.