Thread by @autumnjinyoung, About the trademark, one thing to be clarified is, it is NOT [...]

About the trademark, one thing to be clarified is, it is NOT a revised trademark law nor it is a law, it is a Standard Contract issued by Korean Fair Trade Commision (KFTC) to be used as the guideline for companies & artists to make a contract. It contained minimum clauses that +

needs to be in a contract. This Standard is NOT legally binding, means companies dont have obligation by law to follow it, but once a contract signed following this Standard, then whatever stated in the contract is legally binding for those who signed it. Based on precedent JYPE+

most prob will follow it (for their company image), but remember the Standard was revised in October 2014 (after GOT7 debut), i cant find what clauses KFTC revised from the previous Standard (whether this Article 8 about Trademark is a new revised clause or not), and since it +

has no law enforcement power, the adjustment to the revised Standard is a voluntary action from the company (we never know whether GOT7 contract ever revised or not), but as i mentioned earlier JYPE (hopefully) adjusted the contract to follow the revised Standard. Article 8 +

also does not only contained about Trademark but implicitly mentioned other intellectual property rights as well, such as Copyrights (it further mentioned in Article 10 on how JYPE shall recognize the artists’ Copyrights and it is protected under the Copyrights Law). +

In conclusion, subject to whether JYPE followed this Standard for GOT7 contract, JYPE have the obligation to transfer the intellectual property rights to GOT7 after the contract expired, but it is NOT an automatic process, JYPE may also ask for fair price for their contribution +

in developing such rights. For Copyrights (such as songs, recordings), will also works the same and shall follow Copyrights Law if GOT7 want to obtained it fully from JYPE, but all songs that has members’ name in it, be as songwriter and/or composer, eventhough JYPE own the full+

Copyrights, whenever the song is played, used, streamed, etc, the members associated with that song will still get royalties from it.

Let’s see how this will work in the future, i hope everything goes smoothly for GOT7 without any needs of legal proceeding.

#GOT7FOREVER

I think GOT7 is the first artist who all members left their company after the contract ends and not disbanding (correct me if am wrong). So there has no precedent of how will this transfer of rights works before them. All the other cases like Shinwha, Beast, cannot be used as 1:1

example for GOT7. Although Beast left CUBE on 2017 (after the Standard is revised), they still could not maintain their group name probably because CUBE never adjusted their contract to the revised Standard (i have no knowledge on their case so i might be wrong).

These are the full Standard Exclusive Contract for Pop Culture Artists (Singer-oriented) issued by KFTC for reference and better understanding. Still in Hangul/Korean, but the important clauses for this matter are Article 8 and Article 10.

https://www.ftc.go.kr/solution/skin/doc_mobile.xhtml?fn=7b15898f16796a78f325074db64282ef807034a05fa40f33187593d08a6f79bd&rs=/fileupload/data/result//news/report/2011/

Cont ++

https://www.ftc.go.kr/solution/skin/doc_mobile.xhtml?fn=7b15898f16796a78f325074db64282ef807034a05fa40f33187593d08a6f79bd&rs=/fileupload/data/result//news/report/2011/

End of the clauses.

https://www.ftc.go.kr/solution/skin/doc_mobile.xhtml?fn=7b15898f16796a78f325074db64282ef807034a05fa40f33187593d08a6f79bd&rs=/fileupload/data/result//news/report/2011/

Correction, KFTC revised the Standard on September 19th, 2014 but registered it on October 1st, 2014, either way it's after GOT7 contract, and seems this was the latest revision they made on the Standard.

https://www.ftc.go.kr/www/cop/bbs/selectBoardArticle.do?key=201&nttId=82532&bbsId=BBSMSTR_000000002320&bbsTyCode=BBST01

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