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By news reports, Beijing Haidian People’s Court judged the copyright infringements filed by Han Han and other Chinese writers against Baidu (NASDAQ: BIDU) Wenku, an online document sharing port, in recent. Among all the 14 lawsuits, 7 are supported the claims of compensation as $ 400 for each work involved, yet refuse the claims of shut-down the port and apology. As to the rest 7 lawsuits, Baidu gain an overwhelming victory.

Why to Judge Taobao.com A Joint Liability to Knockoffs?

Posted on September 25, 2012 by yytbest

By You Yunting

Taobao.com is the biggest e-commerce website in China, it is mainly engaged in platform providing rather than doing the business itself. Therefore, all the products sold on it were by third parties, and its platform could be divided into Taobao market and Tmall. In last month, Jack Ma, CEO of Alibaba Group, published the annual total turnover of Taobao.com will supersede the sum up of eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY) and Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) (note: the link is in Chinese). However, on the other hand, with the increasing of the transaction, the risk of intellectual property of the website is also growing, and in fact, we have seen it on the list of notorious market by USA government. In the mean time, considering the strengthened strike on infringements on Taobao.com, the website has been judged for joint liability in dozens of cases. Today, we would like to analyze the judgment of e-commerce’s legal liability by Chinese courts with 2 established cases.

How to Legally Use Mickey Mouse Brand and FIgure in China?

Posted on September 13, 2012 by yytbest

About one month before, the IPR Committee of Shanghai Bar Association invited the police officer from the Economic Investigating Squadron of Shanghai Police Department to deliver a speech on the criminal protection over IPR issues. And in the communication after the seminar, the police officer raised a question to the acceded lawyers, “The Shanghai Disney Land will be constructed several years later, and it’s foreseeable that there could be stores selling Mickey Mouse or other figures articles with no license thereby granted around the park. Yet, by then, the copyright protection term on Mickey could be expired, and so what measures could be taken to strike the unlicensed using or selling?”

Does BesTV Infringe CNTV for Broadcasting Olympic Games?

Posted on September 4, 2012 by yytbest

In recent, CNTV, the subsidiary of China national television station (the “CCTV”), which in charge of its online business, quarreled with SMG’s BesTV (SHEX:600637) on the Olympics broadcasting. By the statement of CNTV, it owns the exclusive online broadcasting right of 2012 London Olympics in China, yet BesTV, with no license form CNTV, provided 1) the streaming of Olympic games, 2) program time-shifted playback through server storage and 3) VOD to local cooperated IPTVs, and that damages CNTV’s legal rights. So far we have heard no reply from BesTV on the accusation.

Does Kingdoms Kill Game Infringes Olympic Champions’s Name Right?

Posted on August 30, 2012 by yytbest

To use famous person’s name as the game character could be deemed infringement? In recent, we found a case quarrelling in that dispute in China.

The popular online game Kingdoms Kill introduced Sun Yang and Ye Shiwen, the gold medal swimmer of China, as its game character with the upsurge of the recent closed international games. As stated by Bianfeng Company, the operator of the game, such virtualized figures would be withdrawn after August. Yet, on the other side, Ye’s father claimed they have make no license to Bianfeng on that game development. After reading the news, a question came up with me: is that infringing the rights of Sun and Ye? The following is my analysis:

A Way for Companies to Agree on Copyright Belonging with Employees in China

Posted on August 29, 2012 by yytbest

In real life, a large number of outstanding copyright works are created during people’s work. Outstanding works will undoubtedly bring great benefits to right people which lead to disputes. For example, Hu Jinqing and Wu Yun, The father of Calabash Brothers, sued Shanghai animation film studio years ago, who were asked to confirm whether the copyright of characters in “Calabash Brothers” belonged to them, which the studio said the art character’s copyright belongs to the studio (note: the link is in Chinese).

Why It Is Not Easy to Combat QVOD Copyright Infringement?

Posted on August 27, 2012 by yytbest

Most right holders of video in China are unsatisfied with a company named QVOD (the “QVOD Company”). Because anyone can use the QVOD Company’s web establishment scheme and the QVOD (the software of QVOD Company) to build a web to stream videos for users, and it has resulted in the wide spread of pirated works, while the right owners could not find the owner of websites in their right protections. Then, by view of law, is the QVOD infringing others’ rights? And what liabilities shall it take accordingly? The following is our analysis on it:

How China Laws Provide on Song Covering in Talent Shows

Posted on August 21, 2012 by yytbest

A question raised up for me on Weibo stating: should all the singing performances by the participants in talent shows be licensed by the copyright holder? And who shall take the infringement liability once it is accused by the right holder? Behind the question, the most heated news related to the topic is that Universal sent a lawyer’s letter to Li Daimo, the participant of The Voice of China, accusing his unlicensed performance of “You Exist in My Song”, the works of Universal’s singer. Also in the letter, the company demands the ceasing of the performance of the song, by both the participant and The Voice. The seemingly short question actually has many legal issues in it, and the following is my answer to them.

App Store: Duty Free for Safe Harbor Principle in China?

Posted on August 20, 2012 by yytbest

In March of 2012, 22 Chinese authors filed a lawsuit against Apple in Beijing No.2 Intermediate People’s Court and claimed compensation of more than ten million. In the case, the plaintiffs stated that their works have been adapted into apps used on iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch, free of being charged at App Store. The case is the first lawsuit with the operator of App Store being the defendants, and will produce a prominent influence on the newly developed online store, which was launched in 2008 and with more than 360 million users . Now the litigation is under the spotlight, and this essay is focusing on the legal status of Apple and the defects in the process complaints of the store.

Copyright Issues behind Disputes on Beijing Love Story

Posted on August 17, 2012 by yytbest

The popular TV drama Beijing Love Story (the “Story”) has become the hot topic of social discussion. The discussion was triggered about with whom the copyright ownership of the story resides, on which both editors Chen Sicheng and Li Yaling claimed the right over it. Chen planned to shoot a film of the Story which Li was against, with the reason that any licenses of the works shall have to go through her approval and that she will have to be paid remuneration. With the escalation of the dispute, both parties seek the settlement through legal ways.

What Legal Risks for Cloud Storage Providers in China?

Posted on August 15, 2012 by yytbest

Recently, the 115 net disk (the “115.com”,Alexa Rank No.519), a famous cloud storage service provider (the “provider”) in mainland China shut down the sharing function of its product, and that has drawn the attention from the public media. With the shut down, the external network user could no longer download the resources from 115.com links, but 115.com replied that such a measure is to prevent the copyright risk and an action shall be taken sooner or later. Other main cloud storage providers in China like Dbank of Huawei, Kuaipan of Kingsoft (HKEX: 3888), the Vdisk of Sina (NASDAQ: SINA) still provide the content sharing service, and so far we have got no news whether they will follow 115.com in the future. Then what risks may online disk providers face for copyright infringement? The following are our opinions on it.

Could the Program Format of The Voice of China be Legally Protected?

Posted on August 14, 2012 by yytbest

The Voice of Holland produced by Telpa Distribution (the “Telpa”) has gained a great success soon after its publication, and then the program format was it was licensed to many countries so we can see The Voice of US, The Voice of Australia and other series programs. With the show introduced by Zhejiang TV and Canxing Company to China, The Voice series also gets to be well-known among the local public and gains a success too.

The most highlight of The Voice is its program format, and unlike other equivalents, the judge of The Voice could not see the participants until they press the button to turn to the singer, which also means they admire the performance by the participant who shall thereby have the chance to choose one of the judges to be his/her mentor on the singing. Such a show mode is refreshing to the local audiences who have been bored with the past talent shows.

Which Part of Medical Instruction Could be Protected by China Copyright Law?

Posted on August 9, 2012 by You Yunting