NFT의 저작권 쟁점에 관한 연구

NFTs(non-fungible tokens) have been very popular around the globe in particular since the NFT for ‘Everydays: The First 5000 Days’ was sold at around 69 million dollars through the Christi acution in March, 2022. It is estimated that the NFT market size will grow at the rate of 23.9% annually through 2023-2027. In spite of this popularity, there have arisen some copyright issues on minting and trades of NFT. Copyright issues are difficult in settling mainly because minting and trades of NFT are deeply related to technologies such as blockchain, smart contract, IPFS, URI, CID, metadata, hash function, or minting. This paper analyzes copyright issues on NFT minting and trades by focusing on the analysis and explanation of technologies. Based upon this analysis, this paper concludes as follows. First, reproduction right is infringed by digitizing the analog copyrighted works in order to mint NFTs. Second, rights of reproduction, making available of works to the public, or (possibly) public display are infringed by uploading copyrighted works on IPFS. Third, this paper concludes that the first sale doctrine or the resale royalty right has nothing to do with the sale or transfer of NFTs because NFT is just a record on the blockchain while the doctrine or right is related to the transfer of the original work or the copy of the work. Finally, it is difficult to settle the issue on whether or not moral rights are infringed because of minting NFTs.