Recently, Korean media reported that musician A filed a lawsuit against G-Dragon (Big Bang), former YG Entertainment Chairman Yang Hyun Suk and CEO of YG Plus, for copyright infringement.
Musician A accused these individuals of copying and using his original work, the song "G-Dragon" (released in 2001), without their consent.
The media reported that on August 12, the Mapo Police Department in Seoul conducted two raids on the offices of YG Entertainment in Mapo-gu and the Korea Music copyright Association (KOMCA) in Gangseo-gu to collect evidence.
However, on August 14, through news agency Dispatch, KOMCA officially spoke up to clear G-Dragon's name.
A representative of the association stated: "G-Dragon is not the copyright holder of the song. It's hard to hold him accountable.
"G-Dragon" was previously a song in the hip-hop compilation album " 2001 Korea Hip-Hop Flex". The song was copyrighted with KOMCA in 2001. Musician A is recognized as the composer and arranger.
In 2009, this song appeared on G-Dragon's live concert solo album under the name "My Age is 13". Musician A said that this was an illegal copy and sued YG for copyright infringement.
However, G-Dragon did not record his name as the song's copyright owner. This means that he has nothing to do with the copyright infringement allegations of musician A. G-Dragon only sang this song as a singer in 2009.
The KOMCA representative emphasized: Since he was not paid for the copyright, it would be difficult to charge him.
Dispatch further explained that the reason why musician A confirmed that his song was plagiarized was because YG changed the song's name in G-Dragon's live concert album in 2010.
YG said that this was just a misunderstanding, because the names of the two songs were overlapping. In fact, there were 2 songs called "G-Dragon" released in 2001, one song composed by A, the other song was a collaboration with Perry composed by Perry.
G-Dragon sang a duet of 2 songs "G-Dragon" in his 2009 concert. When the male singer released the album 1 year later, YG edited his name in the song list. A's "G-Dragon" was changed to "My Age is 13" and Perry's "G-Dragon" was kept the same name.
YG explained, "We thought there might be a mistake because the names of the two songs were the same. We only changed the name of Mr. A's song based on the first line "When I was 13", so this is not an illegal copy".
KOMCA also said that this was not an unauthorized copying act. "Because the song's name has only been changed, it does not constitute illegal copying. But depending on the investigation agency's viewpoint, this could be an act of violating the right to preservation of the work's integrity" - this agency stated.
