South KoreaUnfair Competition Prevention and Trade Secret Protection Act, Art. 2(1) items ka and pa (data misappropriation and general catch-all)
In force since .
An unfair competition rule binding private bodies.
- Audit expectation
- none
What it requires
- Do not acquire data by theft, fraud, unauthorized access, or other wrongful means, or use or disclose data acquired that way.NIST AI RMFMAP 4.1
- Do not use, disclose, or provide to a third party, beyond a contractual access limit and for wrongful profit or to harm the data holder, data you accessed under that limit.NIST AI RMFMAP 4.1
- Do not create, provide, or distribute a technology or device whose main purpose is to circumvent a technical measure protecting data.no control in the NIST AI RMF
- Separately, do not use the outcome of another person's substantial investment or effort for your own business, in a manner contrary to fair commercial practice, without authorization.NIST AI RMFMAP 4.1
These lines are LexLint's reading of the law's text. Also read by: Korean Intellectual Property Office (지식재산처, formerly 특허청) (guidance, recorded ); Supreme Court of Korea, judgment of , case no. 2017Da217847 (recorded ).
In the frameworks
- NIST AI RMF
- MAP 4.1Approaches for mapping AI technology and legal risks of its components – including the use of third-party data or software – are in place, followed, and documented, as are risks of infringement of a third party’s intellectual property or other rights.
Our reading of where this law's duties sit in each framework, and in the NIST AI RMF, line by line beside each duty above. It never says that running a control meets the law. How we read a framework against the law
Who enforces it
Settledness
- As of
- Guidance link
- https://www.kipo.go.kr/ko/kpoBultnFileDown.do?ntatcSeq=16587&ntatcAtflSeq=1&sysCd=&aprchId=BUT0000048
- Case citation
- Supreme Court of Korea, judgment of , case no. 2017Da217847
- Guidance body
- Korean Intellectual Property Office (지식재산처, formerly 특허청)
- Open questions
- Does data that a service makes available to the public count as data "업(業)으로서 특정인 또는 특정 다수에게 제공되는 것으로" ("provided in the course of business to a specified person or a specified number of persons") under item ka of Article 2(1) of the Unfair Competition Prevention and Trade Secret Protection Act, so that collecting it by "부정접속" ("unauthorized access") is covered?
What it makes you log
Logging duty
Article 2(1), items ka and pa, define as acts of unfair competition the wrongful acquisition or use of data (theft, deception, unauthorized access, breach of an access limit, circumventing a technical protection measure) and the catch-all use of another's substantial investment or effort. They impose no duty to create, keep, produce or review a log or record, and the definition carries no territorial clause of its own.
- Kind
- None
- As of
What this law does
Item pa is the general catch-all: using, contrary to fair commercial practice, the outcome of another person's substantial investment or effort for one's own business without authorization.
A separate item, ka, added no earlier than December 2021 and not previously catalogued in this topic's research, is a purpose-built data-misappropriation clause: it reaches acquiring data by theft, fraud, unauthorized access, or other wrongful means and using or disclosing data so acquired; using or disclosing data obtained under a contractual access limit beyond that limit, for wrongful profit or to harm the data holder; acquiring or using data known to have been obtained either way; and providing, manufacturing, or distributing a technology or device whose main purpose is to circumvent a technical measure protecting data.
When LexLint raises it
When your app profile says your app crawls the web or trains models.
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