HYBE considers it “unfair competition” to use BTS materials produced by outside companies. HYBE, the company that encompasses BigHit Music and manages BTS’s career, wants all rights to everything that involves BTS. He has filed a lawsuit in the Central District Court of Seoul, South Korea, against an author and publisher of unauthorized books about the K-Pop group.
There are several books about BTS around the world. Laws vary from country to country. In Brazil and the United States, publishers and writers are protected by freedom of expression, guaranteed by law. Unauthorized biographies, for example, are published all the time.
This type of product, however, runs into other legal problems. For example, the use of images of those portrayed.
The publication of photographs must be authorized by the photographers or copyright holders of the same (if it is an agency, for example). That is what HYBE wants to achieve with the publisher.
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According to the KBIZOOM website, HYBE claims that all content about BTS is the result of considerable investments and efforts. Therefore, they cannot be used by third parties for profit. The defendant publisher published four books about BTS and more than 50% of the content is photos, lyrics and interviews of the group.
For HYBE, this official material is not available for third-party book use. The company believes that publishing books with content produced by it is unfair competition. The prosecuted editor did not appear to testify. Still, the judge did not agree to HYBE’s request to ban the sale of the books immediately.
