This study aims to identify copyright issues regarding the knowledge content currently circulated through knowledge exchange markets in the Republic of Korea. The content providers of knowledge exchange markets comprise government & public institutions, full-text database companies, publishers and individuals. It is worth noting that commercial trade of copyrighted content or material among academic journals, database companies and knowledge exchange markets essentially exclude individual authors who are the actual copyright holders. In principle, the original author owns the copyright whether it has an explicit notice or not. Unless the author/owner officially agrees to transfer the copyright including the right for so-called "derivative works", content-making based or derived from the copyrighted material, digitalization of the copyrighted work as well as its registration on full-text database and circulation through knowledge markets are illegal.