Technical protection

Technical protection (기술적 보호) is referred to any measure to protect the object like copyright in a technical manner. For example, under the Personal Information Protection Act, technical protection measures as well as managerial and physical safeguards necessary for the safe management of the personal information shall be taken by the personal information processors. Article 58 (4) of the Personal Information Protection Act.

Supreme Court case
Supreme Court Decision 2010Do1422 has made the meaning of "technical protection" measures clear.


 * Article 30 (1) of the previous Computer Program Protection Act (amended by Act No. 8032 of Oct. 4, 2006, hereinafter the "Act") provides that no one shall cripple technical protection measures by avoiding, eliminating, and destroying them without legitimate authorities. Under Article 46 (1) iii of the Act, one who violates the above provision is subject to criminal punishment. In light of Article 2 Subparagraph 9 and Article 7 of the Act as a whole, "technical protection measures" refer to measures for the computer program work (the "program") which effectively prevent infringement on the program author's program copyrights including rights to publication, attribution, and maintenance of homogeneity as well as the right to reproduction, revision, interpretation, distribution, publication, and transmission regarding the program, etc. by means of the identifying number, unique number input, encoding, and core technology or device for protecting rights under other laws, etc. Technical measures merely controlling access to the program are not regarded as "technical protection measures."

The Supreme Court also held:
 * In case where Defendants were charged with violation of the previous Computer Program Protection Act (amended by Act No. 8032 of Oct. 4, 2006) by incapacitating technical protection measures of the I-driver program which is a replacement driving service program developed and registered by XX Corporation, the case affirmed the judgment below which acquitted Defendants on the ground that
 * XX Corporation's following measures such that if I-driver program and Ai-call program start to run simultaneously, I-driver program finished promptly;
 * Other programs do not run simultaneously with I-driver program except the basic program automatically running at PDA booting; and
 * I-driver program starts to run only when a user such as a replacement driving service driver touches a PDA screen physically merely constitute access control measures disallowing access to I-driver program which can not be seen as measures preventing effectively infringement on the program.