Limitation to private property rights on intangible cultural heritage

This article provides a brief introduction of the key concepts and legal institutions relevant for the protection of choreography and its interface with intangible cultural heritage. Although Copyright is important for the creator of works it does not protect any idea, procedure, process, method of operation or concept, which means that a copyright is subject to limitation based on public interest consideration. By limiting copyright on works without originality, its aim is to contribute the improvement and development of culture and related industries. Recently, a controversy over privatization of Korean traditional drum dance ‘Samgomu’ continues. Copyright law illustrates a choreographic work as an example of works, and if a work has originality the creator could enjoy moral rights as well as economic rights under the law. However, Samgomu has been developed based on a dance in Buddhist attire which has been handed down from long time ago and it is very much difficult to be departed from the standard patterns to gain additional originality because of limitation of space between drums and dancer. Therefore, it is reasonable that copyright provides little, if any, protection for the traditional dance ‘Samgomu’. This paper also tries to arouse out attention for privatization of works originated from the boundary of intangible cultural heritage. Enacting ‘Act on the Safeguarding and Promotion of Intangible Cultural Heritage’, Korea decided to change its position for the protection of intangible cultural heritage from ‘archetype’ to ‘model or paradigm’ to widen something refined expression of traditional culture as intangible cultural heritage. From the perspective of both copyright limitations based on public interest consideration and embracement of meaning of ‘model or paradigm’, it is more desirable to pay attention to excessive grant of private protection on works from the boundary of intangible cultural heritage.