Tackling the Intellectual Property Issues Relating to Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) – Lessons from the Republic of Korea

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6463-352-8_23How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Non-fungible tokens; Copyright; Regulatory

Abstract

A Non- Fungible Token or an NFT is described as a digital certificate representing ownership of, or rights to a unique digital asset, where the ownership is recorded on a non-centralized blockchain (a digital ledger of transactions that is not owned by the state or authoritative bodies). Common examples of NFTs are usually digital art or artistic works, including photos, videos, audio files, and collectibles, and may extend to game items, tickets, and other digital assets. Under the Malaysian Copyright Act 1987, works eligible for copyright include literary works, musical works, artistic works, films, sound recordings and broadcasts. Generally, an artist, being the author of their artistic works retains the copyright. An artist’s copyright includes right to control in Malaysia the making of copies of the works, display and distribution of copies of works to the public for sale and commercial rental of the works to the public. Generally, a NFT buyer does not own the copyright of the artistic work created by the artist and therefore shall not replicate the artistic work for any commercial use without prior written consent of the artist. Hence, a person may possess, sell, buy and transact in NFT, but he does not automatically own the copyright to such NFT (which will only be owned by the artist/author). This paper analyses the adequacy of the legal framework that regulates among others, the copyright issues in this new category of ‘work’ by looking at recent developments relating to this issue in South Korea.

Copyright

© 2024 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

Download article (PDF)

TY  - CONF
AU  - Farizah Mohamed Isa
AU  - Mardiah Hayati Abu Bakar
AU  - Sarah Munirah Abdullah
AU  - Mohd Shaufiq Abdul Latif
PY  - 2024
DA  - 2024/01/10
TI  - Tackling the Intellectual Property Issues Relating to Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) – Lessons from the Republic of Korea
BT  - Proceedings of the 12th UUM International Legal Conference 2023 (UUMILC 2023)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 295
EP  - 307
SN  - 2667-128X
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6463-352-8_23
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6463-352-8_23
ID  - Isa2024
ER  -