[Law Firm Now] IT·IP Law Firm Minhu... "We Will Compete with Expertise"

Trademark Rights, Arts and Culture, Virtual Assets, and Personal Information Expertise
Kim Kyunghwan, Lead Attorney and Seoul National University Electronic Engineering Master's Graduate
Led Numerous Leading Cases and Landmark Judgments

From the left, Partner Lawyer Yang Jin-young, Representative Lawyer Kim Kyung-hwan, Partner Lawyer Choi Joo-sun, and Partner Lawyer Won Joon-sung of Minhu Law Firm.
[Photo by Minhu Law Firm]

'Baby Shark doo doo doo doo doo doo~ Cute doo doo doo doo doo doo~'

If it were not for Minhoo Law Firm, an IT·IP law firm, the Baby Shark song, which has achieved an astonishing 13 billion YouTube views with its familiar melody, might have disappeared.

An American children's song composer filed a lawsuit claiming that Pinkfong Company's Baby Shark song plagiarized his work. Minhoo Law Firm leveraged its expertise in copyright law to prove that the Baby Shark song is a traditional folk song and cannot be exclusively owned by one person. As a result, the American composer's lawsuit was dismissed both at the trial court and on appeal.

Minhoo Law Firm was established in 2011 by lead attorney Kyunghwan Kim, a graduate of Seoul National University’s Department of Electronic Engineering (Judicial Research and Training Institute class 36), as the first IT-specialized law firm. It is a boutique firm consisting of 16 specialized attorneys, including three partner lawyers: Jinyoung Yang (class 42), Juseon Choi (class 42), and Junseong Won (class 47).

Minhoo has used its top-notch expertise to achieve many landmark rulings. In 2011, it represented victims in the Nate and Cyworld case involving the leakage of personal information of 35 million people and won at the first trial. In 2018, it also represented victims in the Coinrail virtual asset hacking case and secured the first-ever victory against the exchange in a hacking incident.

Although class actions by corporations are rare, Minhoo represented 178 companies in a lawsuit to confirm the non-existence of copyright obligations against a Korean-style copyright monster, ultimately winning at the Supreme Court and establishing legal principles on the temporary storage of computer programs for the first time. It also challenged criminal practices that punished macro programs used in games as malicious software, ultimately securing a groundbreaking acquittal at the Supreme Court after about seven years.

In the AI era, the importance of crawling is undeniable. Since 2013, when no one paid attention to crawling, Minhoo has devoted itself to research. Starting with the 'Rigveda Wiki' case, which was the first to rule that crawling others’ sites or databases could infringe on database rights, Minhoo established legal principles on the illegality conditions of crawling through cases such as 'Job Korea-Saramin' and 'Yanolja-Yeogi Eottae.'

Minhoo has also achieved results in intellectual property (IP) fields such as trademark rights, including leading a Supreme Court plenary session ruling. In 2021, it secured a Supreme Court plenary ruling on trademark law that even if a trademark registrant obtained registration of a trademark identical or similar to a previously filed or registered trademark by another before the registrant’s application date, infringement of the prior registered trademark rights is established regardless of the final decision on the invalidation of the registered trademark. It also obtained rulings confirming that unauthorized registration of another’s trademark words in portal power links can constitute trademark infringement, proving its expertise.

Minhoo has been active in the culture and arts sectors as well. It protected the rights of a film production company by having the claim recognized that the Japanese ship in the KBS drama 'Imjin War 1592' was a copy of the movie 'The Admiral: Roaring Currents.' Recently, it secured recognition from the court of the choreographic authorship of Samgomu and Ogomu dances by the late master Im Maebang U-bong, protecting the rights of his bereaved family.

Minhoo is also playing a pioneering role in the virtual asset field, where precedents and legal principles are lacking. It led a Supreme Court remand ruling that in cases where transferred virtual assets are not returned, not only embezzlement but also breach of trust cannot be established. Notably, it recently applied for special cash conversion of virtual assets and obtained an order to deliver Ethereum to the enforcement officer, opening the possibility of compulsory execution on virtual assets for the first time.

Minhoo is indispensable in the personal information field as well. There had been decades of controversy over whether a web server qualifies as a personal information processing system, but the Supreme Court ruling confirmed that a web server does qualify. Last year, Minhoo represented the Personal Information Protection Commission in a case imposing fines worth hundreds of billions of won on Google and Meta, leading efforts to protect data subjects’ right to self-determination.

Additionally, Minhoo provides legal advice to R&D-dedicated organizations such as the Korea Institute for Advancement of Technology and the Korea Agency for Infrastructure Technology Advancement, as well as public institutions including the Patent Strategy Development Institute, the Korea Institute for the Commercialization of Science and Technology, and the Korea Forestry Promotion Institute.

Lead attorney Kyunghwan Kim stated, “Although Minhoo has been established for about 10 years, it has led many leading cases and landmark rulings every year. I believe the driving force behind this is that all members have devoted themselves to building expertise.” He added, “We will continue to advance as an IT·IP boutique law firm with skill and service.”