퍼블리시티권의 침해와 손해배상의 과제

Publicity right has been started to be accepted as a new property right in the United States since 20th century. However, this publicity right, unlike other traditional property rights, possesses some certain limitations in bringing an order to its legal characteristics and subjecting relevant legal principals to cases. Even in the United States, the origin of Publicity Right, each state forms different definition of this right in the process of enactment or setting a precedent. In South Korea, there is a huge rise of the industrial value of cultural contents in the international market resulting from ‘the Korean wave’ in the sports entertainment area, which causes the growth in conflicts about the violation of publicity rights. Therefore, it is an urgent need to prepare the legal protection against these kinds of conflicts. In this research, compensation system will be examined as a legal aid method for the violation of the publicity right. For this kind of discussion, the history and the concept of the publicity right, object of protection target, and breach type had first been determined and proposed the task of de lege ferenda. Recently in Korea, there had been some remarks, claiming legalization after the legislation bill on the right of publicity had been submitted to the National Assembly. Cases where celebrities’ names, portraits, etc, are used on advertisement or publicity without permission, happen frequently happen and the financial damage of the celebrities are considerable. In addition, in neighboring Asian nation, Korean stars’ photograph collections are being sold without the permission of the holder of a right, so the right of publicity should be legalized and protect the financial value of the celebrities. The need of the legislation had been recognized; however, discussion on the transferability and the range of inheritance of the right of publicity or the decision to locate the legislation does not yet seem mature.