Tag Archives: new work

Why China Court Protects Violation Against GPL License Agreement?

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(By You Yunting) We could find no regulation in China’s Copyright Law and Regulation on the Protection of Computer Software with regard to the open source software. In a dispute judged by Haidian People’s Court in the 1st instance and Beijing No.1 Intermediate People’s Court in the 2nd instance, though both courts determined the validity of the open source agreement, they supported those violating the GNU GPL as failed in disclosing newly added source code could claim the copyright over the new work. To our understanding, the case, on the  one hand, had showed the pragmatism of China courts, and on the other hand, it also demonstrated that the open source software organization is necessarily to be seen in the right protection on the OSS software.

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Parody on Copyrighted Works Could Be Infringement? II

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the poster of the parodic World of Warcraft

By Albert Chen

II. Is it necessary infringing of parody?

Just like analyzed above, the “transformative use” may be the re-creation basing on the ideas, and also could be the re-creation relying on the “expression”. Therefore, the infringement of parody could not be determined in general and should be considered in situations.

1. The parody with transformative use of idea

The basic principle of Copyright Law is to protect the expression while such protection will not extend to the idea which is not detailed by the expression. Surely, there has regulated no specific standard or border between the abstract of idea and the concrete of expression, and that makes the judgment depend on the case analysis.

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