Instructor accused of “copying teaching methods” not sent back… Police: “Idea is not eligible for copyright protection”

A crafts instructor who was accused of using someone else's educational content and teaching methods without permission was cleared of the charges following a police investigation.

According to the legal community on the 12th, Guro Police Station in Seoul decided not to forward A, a woman in her 40s, who was booked on charges of leaking trade secrets and violating copyright law on the 2nd of last month.

Mr. A was accused of using lecture materials acquired in the process of being entrusted with instructor management duties from Mr. B, an education program producer, in his lectures without permission last year.

Mr. B delivered various materials, including educational proposals, textbooks, and activity sheets to Mr. A, and Mr. B claimed that Mr. A then stole these materials without permission to create lecture content and imitated the lecture method using audio-visual materials.

Although it is true that Mr. A received the material from Mr. B, he claimed that he had previously taught classes using audio-visual materials. He also explained that the activity sheet used in the lecture was not an unauthorized use of Mr. B's material, but was drafted using artificial intelligence (AI) and organized in a universal manner.

The police determined that the materials used by Mr. A in his lectures were already distributed to numerous instructors and students at many educational institutions and used as actual teaching materials, so they were only public materials and did not amount to a trade secret leak. It was determined that the teaching method using audio-visual materials and the order of class composition fell into the realm of ideas and were not subject to copyright protection.

Attorney Kim Dae-won of Daeryun Law Firm, who represented Mr. A, explained, "Copyright applies to concrete and detailed expressions, not the abstract idea itself. We were able to get a decision not to send the case by actively explaining that the content that Mr. B took issue with was nothing more than an idea that anyone could borrow because it is a universal method for education."

Reporter Jeong Cheol-wook

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Instructor accused of “copying teaching methods” not sent… Police: “Ideas are not subject to copyright protection” (Shortcut)