저작권법상 변환에 관한 연구

The copyright law authorizes the exclusive rights of reproduction, distribution and the production of derivative works to the owner of author’s property rights of computer programs. Therefore, if the reproduction and the production of derivative works would exceed a permitted scope under the copyright law or by the copyright owner, then the author might be entitled to claiming his or her rights against such an infringement. Opponents of reverse engineering have attempted to forbid reverse engineering by utilizing this framework of principle in the copyright law. And as the reproduction and translation may take place in the disassembly and decompilation process, the subparagraph 34 of article 2 of the copyright law defined the act of decompilation of program codes as reproduction and translation, and so the article 101-4 permitted reverse engineering by restricting the author’s property right concerning the reproduction and translation. Meanwhile, there are the points in controversy under this provision. one of the points is that it is difficult to say that the term ‘translation’ is something to be defined as an assortment out of author’s property rights. In this aspect, ‘translation’ of what the the subparagraph 34 of article 2 describes is worth materializing its meaning. Therefore, this study looks further into both the meaning of ‘translation’ and the interpretations on ‘translation’ and their problems in copyright law, and then proposes that the need to interpret that the term ‘translation’ is defined as the production of derivative works out of author’s property rights or amend the related provision of the copyright law arises against the mentioned matters as regards the ‘translation’ of the subparagraph 34 of article 2.