웹콘텐츠 시장에서의 퍼블리시티권

The right of publicity is intended to protect individuals' economic rights related to the overall external aspects such as names, portraits, voices, identities, images and so on. The right of publicity has a close relationship with personality, in that it originated from the right to privacy, and on the other hand, it contains various characteristics of intellectual property rights. In the case of ‘Hwiso Lee’, in which the term of ‘publicity right’ was first used in Korea, it was judged that the right of publicity could not be applied because a name or portrait having a property value could not be said to have been used commercially in literature. The judgement does not seem appropriate in that the creation and publication of literary works and commerciality cannot be completely separated. Although literary works are not created only for commercial use, commerciality is an important criterion in the processes of publishing, selling and distributing the literary works. With the development of digital technology and the expansion of users’ digital devices, web contents are emerging as important contents in the culture and art environment. In addition to popularity, commerciality is a critical factor in the production and distribution of web contents. Web novels, web toons, and emoticons are ones of the most popular representative examples in the Korean web content market, and the comparative new areas where the publicity right issues can be raised. The paper examines the aspects of the issues related to the right of publicity raised when characters who are reminiscent of real celebrities are used in web novels, when characters drawn based on pictures or drawings of real celebrities are used in webtoons and when some emoticons based on real celebrities are produced and distributed. It reviews the characteristics of the right of publicity and the court cases, and analyzes the aspects of the right of publicity in the representative new web contents such as web novels, wen toones, and emoticons.