| Abstract: |
Korea has continuously made efforts to secure overseas markets and enhance
industrial competitiveness. The government is actively pursuing trade
agreements with around 10 more countries, including those in Africa where FTAs
have yet to be established, thereby continuing its FTA policy. The growing
market for digital content and trade volume are accompanied by the
international spread of IPR protection for digital content, and that one of
the main channels driving this spread is FTAs. Strong IPR provisions for
digital content in FTAs are no longer limited to agreements among high-income
countries. FTAs with middle- and lower-income countries are also increasingly
including more robust IPR protection measures. Moreover, the strengthening of
IPR protection through FTAs has a positive effect on digital content trade.
Given the rapid expansion of Korea’s digital content market and trade, such
trade policy tools—including FTAs—can play a valuable role in sustaining this
upward trend. Countries with which Korea is currently pursuing Economic
Partnership Agreements(EPAs) can be broadly categorized into three groups
based on the level of intellectual property rights (IPR) protection in their
existing FTAs and their current domestic IPR legal frameworks. The first group
includes countries such as the Dominican Republic and Morocco, which have
already concluded FTAs containing relatively high-level IPR protection
provisions and whose domestic legal systems also provide comparatively strong
protection for IPR. The second group includes countries like Thailand, which
have signed FTAs that broadly cover various aspects of IPR protection, but
whose domestic legal frameworks remain insufficient for effectively protecting
digital content copyright. The third group consists of countries such as
Pakistan, Egypt, and Kenya, which have not previously concluded FTAs that
contain substantial IPR protection provisions and whose domestic legal systems
are currently inadequate for the practical enforcement of digital content
copyright. This classification allows Korea to calibrate the direction of its
FTA policies with each partner and assess the appropriate level of IPR
protection that should be pursued in the EPA negotiations. Promoting digital
content copyright protection—regardless of the partner country’s
classification—has a positive effect on the trade of digital content-related
services. Therefore, it would be desirable to include high-standard IPR
protection provisions in EPAs. However, as noted above, it would be more
realistic to adopt differentiated approaches that take into account each EPA
partner’s policy direction in existing FTAs and their current level of IPR
protection. |