저작권침해 어플리케이션을 판매하는 앱스토어의 책임

Abstract

The sale of applications on the APP Store is keep growing rapidly and worldwidely and the damages of copyrighters are going to be increased enormously. However, as we see that the most of the people who infringe copyrights are people lack of assets or small IT firms who cannot afford the compensations, it is not enough to protect the copyrighters by charging them after the infringement has happened. And the illegal application softwares are distributed by the APP Store on the internet so it is the best policy to charge the APP Store to claim for damages. The problem is whether we can charge the APP Store as the Online Service Provider. The APP Store is an OSP which provides storage service, because it circulates the applications by saving the programs as the inventor requires. Korean copyright law does not have a general provision of an OSP liabilities but the safe harbor provision, so the precedents acknowledge the OSP liabilites by backing the illegal act. But recently the judicial cases acknowledge the OSP liabilities in the open market narrowly. And the APP Store has a very similar structure to the open market, so these judicial cases will be applied to the APP Store either. Therefore, it is difficult to charge the OSP liabilities to the APP Store when we follow the precedents. By the Korean copyright law article 103, when the APP Store follow the Notice and takedown action, the OSP liabilites on the damages arosed after the NTD will be removed. The damages before the NTD action still be in charge by the backing, but we should cure the copyrighter's damages by the OSP to protect the copyright. So the APP Store will compensate to the infringed copyrighters first, and then the APP Store can claim the indemnity to the illegals. And eventually, the new kind of dangers in the mobile technology should be managed by the insurance.