The Research Center for Digital Law, formerly known as the Biomedical Law Research Center, was reorganized as the Technology and Law Research Center on July 1, 1999, and renamed the Technology, Ethics and Law Research Center in March 2004. On July 1, 2021, in response to the various legal controversies arising from the advent of the digital age, the Technology, Ethics and Law Research Center was merged into the Digital Law Center. 

We are now into the 21st year of the 21st century. Computer and digital technology have rapidly developed. In particular, expedited by the COVID-19 pandemic, an era of remoteness, internet, and touchlessness has arrived. The fast development of information technology has changed behavior models of individuals in the entire society. This would be the new normal of our future world: individual lives become online, virtual, and on the cloud platform; government databases turn to digital and cloud platforms; court and trial information are more accessible; AI and big data are applied to court decisions. Moreover, technologies such as fintech, cloud computing, and blockchain have been vastly applied to business and management. Cross-border e-commerce and service have broken tangible state sovereignty boundaries.

When technology, AI, and big data have changed our lives and brought us convenience, many legal issues related to information security or personal data protection have occurred at the same time. For example, technology monitoring using big data can disclose to the public individuals’ digital footprints and personal privacy. It has been challenged whether the government may use technology to follow personal tracks. Besides, digital service providers are criticized for their invading citizens’ rights to choose and to be forgotten, and for they monopoly on commercial markets.

In general, legal disciplines include five major fields: civil law, criminal law, public law, commercial law, and fundamental legal studies, all of which have been experiencing the challenges of technologization and digitalization. As a result, we would like to initiate an integrated and interdisciplinary study of emerging challenges facing various legal fields. To accommodate to digital transformation, we hope that the Center will be able to establish a research center of digital legal issues, to provide research opinions of legal regulations and suggestions for specific cases.

The Center aims to solve significant issues of the digital transformation of finance, business, medical treatment, and disease prevention. As for finance and business, our research will focus on the development and legal regulations of financial technology service, including issues such as blockchain, cloud computing, and data analysis. The supervision of digital financial service (mobile payment, peer-to-peer lending platforms, equity crowdfunding platforms), virtual currency, and money laundering will also be studied.

As for medical treatment and disease prevention, with the growth of various kinds of biomedical technology, new medical technology, materials, and assistive devices are further expected in this era of Big Data. However, the lack of legal regulations of medical technology and devices has hindered the realization of these new technologies. Clinical trials and medicament license for Covid-19 vaccines are an eminen...