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Court orders clothing business to pay GFriend for photo piracy

  • Published : Dec 28, 2016 - 18:16
  • Updated : Dec 28, 2016 - 18:16

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(K Culture, K-WAVE)
The Seoul Central District Court has ordered a clothing company to pay 18 million won ($14,880) to K-pop group GFriend who demanded compensation from the company for photo piracy, according to the court Wednesday.

The clothing company, “Three Q,” supplied the clothes at GFriend’s photoshoot for “K WAVE” magazine in April, 2015. The company then used some of the photos on their website from April to July without prior approval from the group or their agency.

The members of GFriend filed a lawsuit against the company on charges of photo piracy in March demanding 60 million won.

“When a clothing company sponsors the clothes for a magazine photoshoot, it is (common) to put those photos on the company’s website,” the company in its defense.

The court replied, “The photos were being uploaded for about three months and this is when GFriend was already highly popular, so it is expected that the company should have (made a) considerable amount of advertising profit.”

In order to decide the amount of compensation to be given to GFriend, the court took in account that the magazine credited the company and that the photos were released to the public through portal websites, such as Naver and Daum.

Both the defendant and plaintiff appealed against the decision.

By Kim So-yeon (syk19372@heraldcorp.com)

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