Your Logo Was Made by AI — Can You Protect It in Korea?

In Korea, a purely AI-generated logo or image is, as a rule, not protected by copyright: the Copyright Act defines a work as a creation expressing human thought or emotion. That is not the end of the story, though. The parts a person selected, edited, or combined can be protected — and for logos there is a route that never asks who drew the design: trademark registration.

If you are a foreign founder or a company bringing a brand to Korea, there is a fair chance some of your assets came out of a generative tool — the logo, the product images, the ad creatives. I am Jaewon Lee, a Korean attorney and licensed patent and trademark attorney in Seoul, and brand protection for foreign businesses is a large part of my practice. Here is how Korean law treats AI-made assets, and what is worth doing before launch.

Why doesn't copyright cover a purely AI-generated image in Korea?

The Korean Copyright Act protects "creations expressing human thought or emotion" (Copyright Act, Article 2). The word to notice is human. Copyright in Korea arises automatically at the moment of creation, with no registration or any other formality required (Article 10) — but before that generous rule can help you, the thing must first qualify as a human creation. Administrative practice follows this line: the Korea Copyright Commission's registration practice does not accept the AI-generated portion itself as a subject of registration, and the guidance published by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism together with the Commission points the same way.

Be precise about what this means. "No copyright" is not a penalty for using AI — it means one less weapon when a competitor copies the image. And if your plan was to rely on the work-for-hire rule, the provision that makes a company the author of works created by its employees in the course of duty and published under the company's name (Article 9), notice that the rule presupposes a copyrightable work. If what the employee produced is a purely AI-generated image, there is no copyright for the company to own in the first place.

What about the parts a person actually worked on?

In practice, few brand assets are raw AI output. Someone chose among dozens of generations, cropped and recolored, redrew the lettering, combined the output with elements made by hand. Where that selection, arrangement, and modification carries human creativity, those parts can be protected, and Korean registration practice operates accordingly — the human contribution is identified and set apart from the generated portion. How much human input is enough has not been settled by the Supreme Court, so it is judged case by case.

The consequence for a business is a habit, not a theory: keep the making. Prompts, intermediate versions, edit history, who did what. If the work was commissioned from an agency, write two things into the contract — whether and how AI may be used, and who ends up owning what. I explained separately why ownership of commissioned work in Korea needs to be on paper, and why registration is still worth it for the human-made works you do own; that piece pairs with this one. (https://www.lawyerseoul.com/blog/copyright-in-korea-why-registration-matters-even-though)

Can you still use AI-made branding — and what does Korea's new AI law add?

Protection and permission are different questions. Generative tools sometimes produce output close to what they learned from, and if your AI-made image resembles an existing work, a famous character, or a well-known design, using it in commerce puts you on the receiving end of an infringement claim — "the AI drew it" is not a defense. Check the terms of the generation service as well: whether commercial use is allowed, on which plan, and who bears the rights and the responsibility for the output. Services differ, and so do plans within one service.

Korea has also added something of its own. The Framework Act on Artificial Intelligence Development and Creation of a Trust Base — Korea's comprehensive AI statute, in force since this year — includes a transparency provision requiring that generative-AI output be indicated as AI-generated (AI Framework Act, Article 31). The duty sits with "AI business operators" as the Act defines them — those who develop and provide AI, or provide products and services using it — and the details of how to indicate are left to the Presidential Decree. Whether your business falls within that definition, and what the indication must look like in your case, should be confirmed against the decree and government guidance rather than assumed either way. The short version: if AI is part of what you offer to the Korean market, this statute belongs on your launch checklist.

So how do you actually protect an AI-made logo in Korea?

For a logo, the strong tool was never copyright to begin with. Korean trademark law protects a mark "used to distinguish one's goods from the goods of others" (Trademark Act, Article 2) — it protects the source-identifying function, not the act of creation, so it does not ask whether a human or a machine drew the design. An AI-generated logo can be registered as a trademark in Korea if it clears the ordinary requirements — distinctiveness and the absence of conflicting earlier marks among them — and registration gives you exclusivity for the designated goods and services.

Two points foreign businesses miss more often than any other. First, trademark rights are territorial: your home-country registration does not protect you in Korea, and Korea's system turns on who files here first — I walked through the Korean filing process in my registration guide for foreign businesses. (https://www.lawyerseoul.com/blog/how-to-register-a-trademark-in-korea-a-guide-for-foreign) If the logo is the face of your Korean launch, the copyright uncertainty around AI-made designs makes the Korean trademark filing more urgent, not less. Second, where neither copyright nor a registered trademark reaches, the Unfair Competition Prevention Act has a clause against the unauthorized use of the product of another's substantial investment or effort (UCPA, Article 2). It exists, and it has mattered in some disputes — but its requirements are demanding, and it is a fallback, not a strategy.

One honest caveat before you file anything. Outcomes here turn on variables this article can only name: how much human contribution went into each asset, the terms of the tool you used, whether the output resembles something that already exists, how the AI Act's decree shapes the indication duty, and the very different ways other countries treat AI-generated works. If AI-made assets are about to become the face of your Korean business, have the whole set reviewed once — what to register, what to record, and what to put in the contracts.

If you would like advice in English on protecting your brand in Korea, you can reach me through lawyerseoul.com.

Jaewon Lee, Attorney at Law (Joye Law)

#AI copyright Korea
#trademark Korea
#Korean lawyer English
#IP for foreign business