Resources

Dec 17,2020

Express n° 34 News: IP ∣ SPC promulgates Opinions on Strengthening Protection of Copyright and Copyright-related Rights

Total word count:2367

On 16th November 2020, five days after the Chinese top legislature adopted the 3rd amendments of the Copyright Law, the Supreme People’s Court (the SPC) promulgates the “Opinions on Strengthening Protection of Copyright and Copyright-related Rights” (Fa Fa [2020] No. 42) (the Opinions). The Opinions has come into effect as of the date of promulgation.


The Opinions lays out the following approach:


Against the backdrop of encouraging development of emerging industries, the Opinions vows to ramp up protection of creators’ rights, promote the creation and dissemination of intellectual achievements and balance the interests of the creators, the disseminators and the public (Art. 1).


In the context of fast evolving technologies in the Internet, artificial intelligence, and mega data field, the Opinions vows to ascertain copyright subject matters based on the parameters set in the Copyright Law and underlines the importance of adjudicating cases involving sports live streaming, online game live streaming as well as data infringement (Art.5).


To improve the quality and efficiency of copyright case trials, the Opinions advocates to:

‐     promote pilot project where cases are categorized in accordance with the level of their complexity so that cases of low level of complexity could be fast-tracked and adjudicated within a shorter time period (Art.2).

‐     allow novel approaches like blockchain to preserve, fix and adduce evidence (Art.2).

‐     apply Owner Presumption principle where natural persons, legal persons or unincorporated organisations that sign the works, performance or audio products in customary manners are presumed to be the copyrighters of such works, performance or audio products, unless proved otherwise. The plaintiff that is presumed to be the copyrighter is exempted from furnishing additional documentary evidence, provided that the defendant fails to adduce contrary evidence (Art.3, 4).

‐     promote the Good Faith Principle to discourage mala fide litigation and fraudulent acts like falsifying, concealing and destroying evidence, making false statements/affidavits, or producing false signature or authentication statement (Art.9, 10).


The Opinions also reiterated on the calculation of damages and the reimbursement of the copyrighter’s reasonable costs to stop infringement (Art.7), the destruction of infringing copies, as well as the materials and tools mainly used for the production or manufacture of infringing copies (Art.6), and the determination of willful infringement under the circumstance where the infringer repeats infringement acts in defiance of a prior settlement agreement reached with the copyrighter regarding the same act (Art.8).


Contributed by: Nan Jiang & Huimin Qin