The writer of the drama "Extraordinary Attorney Woo" sued the production company seeking a separate fee for release on Netflix but lost on appeal after losing at first instance. The appellate court found that release through an online video service (OTT) cannot immediately be regarded as a separate secondary use.
According to legal sources on the 2nd, the Civil Division 4 of the Seoul High Court (Presiding Judge Kim Woo-jin) dismissed the appeal by the Korea Broadcasting Writers Association in the appellate case over a monetary claim it filed against ASTORY, the production company, in January. As in the first trial, the plaintiff lost.
The lawsuit arose from a TV scriptwriting contract signed in Oct. 2019 between Writer A and ASTORY. The writer argued that because the contract was premised on broadcasting through a broadcaster, ASTORY's sale of broadcasting rights to Netflix in 2021 was a separate use beyond the original contract scope. The claim also sought additional fees and delay damages for the Netflix release. The Korea Broadcasting Writers Association joined the suit after being entrusted with the script's property rights by A.
However, the court did not accept the plaintiff's argument. The bench found that even if some provisions of the writing contract were drafted on the basis of "broadcast," that alone does not limit the entire contract to broadcast only. By late 2019, when the contract was signed, release via OTT alongside broadcaster scheduling had already taken root as a common distribution method, and the contract structure likewise could not easily be read as excluding it.
The bench in particular noted that "Extraordinary Attorney Woo" aired on ENA and was released on Netflix on the same day. It was not a structure where broadcast occurred first and then the work was repurposed on another medium. In the end, it is difficult to view the Netflix release as a newly added separate use after broadcast, and therefore it is also difficult to recognize any obligation to pay a separate secondary-use fee.
The appellate court also cited the circumstances of using a standard contract as a basis for its decision. It found that although OTT transmissions were becoming common at the time of contracting, there was a strong possibility that no separate standard writing-contract form premised on that had yet been prepared.
The court further found that the contract in this case limited secondary use to situations such as seasonal productions or remakes, leaving room to conclude that the production company viewed OTT release as a form of use contemplated by the original contract and did not intend to treat it as a separate secondary use.
Ultimately, the appellate bench held that, based solely on the circumstances advanced by the writer, it is difficult to conclude that the purpose of this writing contract was confined to broadcast only.