A Study on the Legal Protection of Graphic Design on the Metaverse Platform

With the advent of the non-face-to-face digital era due to the spread and prolonged spread of COVID-19, interest in metaverse, which corresponds to virtual space, has soared, and various platforms have emerged using metaverse-related technologies. As for the design related to the metaverse, the Design Protection Law did not provide a separate regulation for graphic design at the time, so it was protected as a partial design expressed on the part of the product. With the revision of the Design Protection Law in 2021, the concept of graphic emerged. Under the revised law, graphics cannot be an effective means of protection for various newly emerging graphic designs because they contain only graphics that are used or functionally used to operate devices. In a situation where new types of graphic design are continuously created, only the most basic form of graphic design is protected, so there are still many graphic designs that are excluded from protection. In particular, since the design ceated in the virtual world based on the real world motif is very similar in appearance to the design in the real world, the graphic design protection system under the current law can be a major obstacle to protecting the design created in the virtual space and preventing the rights of others. Therefore, this paper aims to categorize metaverse through prior research, investigate the protection system of graphic design under the current law, and present the direction of improvement of the graphic design system for graphic protection in the virtual world most similar to the real world.