Definition of the Copyright Technology Article 1 of the Copyright Act stipulates that the purpose of the Act is to protect the rights of authors and the rights associated with them and to promote the fair use of works in order to contribute to the improvement and development of culture and the related industries. Copyright technology means the different technologies and services that can protect the rights of authors efficiently and to promote the fair use of works, as explained in the Copyright Act.

Status of the Copyright Technology Research Development Since 2011, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the Korea Copyright Commission (hereinafter referred to as the “Commission”) have supported a range of copyright technology R&D projects to vitalize the development and use of the copyright protection technologies. Researchers covering universities, research institutes and industries are developing various types of technologies, not only core technologies, such as DRM and watermark, etc., but also service technologies utilizing such core technologies.
In the beginning, the development of technology predominantly focused on protecting the copyright, such as DRM, watermark, filtering, etc.; however, the development of the service R&D technologies is on the rise to support the fair use, rather than the protection of the copyright.