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Text of the post:
[Notice: Regarding cessation of publicization for the comic parts of Leviathan and Copyright Disputes]
Hello, this is Kim Jihoon, Director at Project Moon.
I am here to inform you regarding the cessation of publicization of the comic parts of Leviathan.
Around December of 2023, we received a Certificate of Contents letter from the artist of WonderLab and the artist of Leviathan.
It was delivered to us via the PM User Association(Game Consumer Society), a group with whom we had been in legal conflict until recently. In summary, it stated that Project Moon should forfeit all rights for WonderLab and Leviathan comics, including our copyright.
To be more specific, it was a final notice that directed us to withdraw all forms of bestowment, consent, and agreement of our rights and authorities regarding WonderLab and Leviathan.
Moreover, each artist has registered themselves to the Korea Copyright Commission, without any prior consultation with Project Moon, as the copyright holder of each comic.
After the first Certificate of Contents, we exchanged three responses regarding its content. However, after we sent them our conversation and work records, their law firm did not give us any response, nor did they take any of the measures requested by Project Moon.
Later, the ‘Game Consumer Society’ and ‘WonderLab’ filed a civil copyright suit against Project Moon.
We will proceed with the copyright conflict suit to clarify the vague state of the copyright conflict; therefore, the comic parts of Leviathan will no longer be publicized.
I decided that writing this notice became necessary because I believed that a proactive response was needed to the Certificate of Contents and their unilateral decision to register the copyrighted material to the Korea Copyright Commission.
I would like to inform you that we will proceed with a copyright suit to have WonderLab and Leviathan recognized as ‘works made for hire’ under Project Moon.
The contents below are small but detailed information that I can share explaining the context of the circumstances.
Please be aware that the following content may be of significant length.
One of the points made in the Certificate of Contents states as follows: because Project Moon did not directly participate in the creation of the comics, the works belonged solely to each artist, and it is unjust for Project Moon to exercise any right over them.
However, over the duration of the Comics’ serialization, their contracts with Project Moon were in the form of contractual employment. The contract also states that Project Moon would compensate them in monthly salaries. As long as they were receiving salaries from Project Moon, they would be working as Project Moon’s employees, creating comics as works made for hire.
This information was clearly specified in the recruitment post for Leviathan comic artists. It is also clear that they were informed of this detail beforehand.
2021.05.28 [프로젝트문 세계관기반 웹툰 연재 작가 모집(Recruiting artists for serialized webcomic set in Project Moon’s world)] - https://projectmoon.postype.com/post/9941572
We also have records of direct participation and feedback, such as planning and review, from Project Moon’s staff and myself in creating the comic.
Based on the contract, they worked on the comic as an employee of the company, and the company paid them salaries exceeding 3 million KRW monthly regardless of the comic’s serialization status as per the terms of the contract.
Also, over the course of Leviathan’s serialization, they received the identical percentage of bonuses that the employees of our development team received.
In other words, both artists created the comic as Project Moon’s staff under an employment relationship, and they have been paid, as stipulated in their contracts, as Project Moon’s employees.
I intend to take legal action, as I find it unacceptable that they claim to be the sole copyright owners of the comics and are demanding that Project Moon relinquish all associated rights over the works.
In a separate issue, Leviathan’s artist posted online that they received a unilateral decision and notice from Project Moon that the serialization of Leviathan would be ceased.
The following is my response to that claim. Contrary to what was said, the artist contacted Project Moon, saying that they no longer believed that they could continue with the serialization of Leviathan. We accepted this and urgently shifted the series to a form of a web novel serialization instead as we were developing Limbus Company. We have reached an agreement with the artist based on our respect for them that, to make sure that they receive as little fallout as possible from this process, Project Moon would make a notice taking the majority of the blame when it came to the cessation of serialization. The artist has expressed gratitude for that decision, the contents of which are still in the records. While there were inadequacies in our preparation for Leviathan, we would like to clarify that we have not made a unilateral decision and notice to the artist that the serialization of Leviathan would be ceased. The records of this conversation will be submitted to the court in the process.
WonderLab’s artist mentioned that they heard the news that we had made a request not to make Leviathan ‘PC’ as WonderLab was. We gave them a response regarding this claim around August of last year in our email exchange with the artist of WonderLab. Below is an excerpt from our email exchange in August of 2023.
I would like to carefully address your statement: ‘I heard that my style was too distinct, and did not match the direction that the company wished to go in. I also heard that the company(Project Moon) has requested future comics to be ‘less PC’.’
It must have been very distressing and disturbing as an artist to hear something like that, though I am not certain how or where you may have heard that suggestion from. If you would allow me to make a careful guess, back when we were discussing the direction for WonderLab, we had agreed, per your request, to not specify or reveal the genders of each character featured in WonderLab. We decided, however, that characters would need a description and depiction of gender in our subsequent works. It was because while we tried our utmost to ensure that narratives or treatments of characters did not vary depending on their gender, it was rare for us to not specify a character’s gender. That is why we considered specifying each character’s gender in our next project, but our intention may have been incorrectly relayed in the process.
We have records of planning and discussing details about Abnormalities featured in WonderLab as well.
Back in 2020, when our company was operating at a smaller scale, our work feedback was conducted via a group chat on Kakao Talk; the records of work and conversation still remain. We intend to submit the entirety of its contents to court as well.
I sincerely apologize to our fans for causing them concern due to non-game related issues such as copyright.
We refrained from directly addressing the artists’ online posts as long as we could in hopes of resolving this misunderstanding some day. However, when we recevied the Certificate of Contents instructing us to forfeit all rights regarding those materials, we decided that a response was necessary.
Project Moon will actively meet this copyright dispute, and will take appropriate measures upon its conclusion.