The Research on the Copyright Issues of the Deposited Materials relating to Intangible Cultural Heritage

One of the issues in disputes regarding identifying rights of individual content at museums is the copyright issues of deposited materials. With the increasing awareness of the importance of copyright, a number of institutes have been processing copyrights of archives regarding intangible cultural heritage, but there still remain obscure areas of the copyright over audio or visual materials and photos donated by senior forklorists. As a matter of fact, hands-on staff have focused only on the ownership of the materials, overlooking the aspects of copyrights. There is an exact distinction between ownership and copyright. Although the ownership of the material may belong to the museum, the copyright may remain on the donaters.This research aims at analysing copyright issues that pertinent institutes have faced regarding the deposited materials about intangible cultural heritage, and examining how to apply current copyright law in order to make good use of the deposited materials. Museums should take several things into consideration. Firstly, they need to make contracts on the vested right and the range of usage of the depositied materials more in detail in order to make positive use of their possessed materials. However, when they find it difficult to make clear the right ownership, they should approach it in terms of risk management. Second, they need to share the deposited materials that they possess exclusively with other institutes to maximize resources. Current copyright law partly allows each institute to share the deposited materials and needs to pursue extended sharing of the deposited materials even through its modification.