Recently a digital map for nation-wide cadastral data in South Korea have been produced, particularly with the impetus of which aimed to produce re-usable and sharable national spatial database. However, intellectual property for cadastral data is sti...
Recently a digital map for nation-wide cadastral data in South Korea have been produced, particularly with the impetus of which aimed to produce re-usable and sharable national spatial database. However, intellectual property for cadastral data is still an extremely vague concept in South Korea where illegal copies are frequently circulated. Public complains strongly about that serious restrictions are placed on access to or use of the cadastral data due to poor institutional basis in terms of intellectual property rights (IPR). The aim of this research was to develop appropriate strategies in which legal circulation of the data can be better implemented based on Korean IPR cultures.
Following a series of interviews and questionnaire survey for local government, major mapping companies and universities in South Korea, an institutional framework is presented to capture the interaction between user communities and data providers. Four criteria that are critical to legal circulation of the data were recommended: (1) proper implementation of current civil law and copyright law (2) differentiated circulation system in consideration of user community characteristics such as individuals, companies, or academic organizations (3) establishments of digital repositories program (4) partial amendments of laws in relation to the data circulation.
The result of study was derived based on current figures on the existing legal and global measures of IPR protection across South Korea. It is believed that this work package could play a role in creating appropriate, practical tools and resources to support reasonable decision-making by taking an empirical evidence approach. It is expected that how to encourage deposit of cadastral data and associated problems with the amendment of the related laws would be realistically discussed much more than before since the result of this study has laid a strong foundation to ensure IPR in cadastral database circulation.