Tag Archives: China copyright law

What’s Left for Photographers When the Court Decided That the AI-generated Image Did Not Constitute Infringement Upon the Photographic Work it Mimicked?

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(By You Yunting) On April 2nd, 2026, the Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court in Germany issued a final judgment regarding a dispute over an AI-generated image that mimicked a photographic work, holding that the defendant’s conduct did not constitute copyright infringement. Under China’s Copyright Law, such conduct would also fall outside the scope of copyright infringement. This judgment means that a significant portion of photographers’ business may be lawfully replaced by AI. The underlying cause is that the traditional idea-expression dichotomy in copyright law can no longer adapt to the creation logic of generative AI.

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How Will NVIDIA’s Purchase of Pirated Content to Train AI Be Characterized Under Chinese Law?

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(By You Yunting) Recently, a lawsuit filed by U.S. copyright holders against NVIDIA for allegedly using pirated materials to train AI models has attracted significant public attention. According to the complaint, in order to quickly obtain more than 500 terabytes of data, NVIDIA proactively contacted the pirate website Anna’s Archive and paid hundreds of thousands of U.S. dollars to download a large volume of pirated content, including copyrighted books and articles.

Anna’s Archive is one of “shadow libraries” known for their decentralized and anonymous nature, most of which typically provide access to literature in a way that infringes upon its copyright. If the plaintiffs’ allegations are true, it will be a serious blemish on the reputation of NVIDIA, the world’s most valuable company, to have paid a pirate website for content and then been sued by copyright holders. However, the unauthorized use of training data can be considered the “original sin” of nearly all general AI companies. In both China and the United States—the two global leaders in AI technology, numerous lawsuits concerning AI training data have already emerged. We will discuss whether, under Chinese law, NVIDIA’s alleged conduct will be considered breach of law.

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Qvod Vs China Government: RMB 260 million Punitive Fine for Copyright Infringement?

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(By You Yunting) Introduction to the Case:

Plaintiff: Shenzhen Qvod Technology Co., Ltd (the “Qvod”)

Defendant: Market Supervision Administration of Shenzhen Municipality (the “MSA”)

Court of first instance: Shenzhen Intermediate People’s Court

The MSA filed a case with the Shenzhen Intermediate People’s Court, and claimed to cancel the punitive fine of RMB 260 million from the MSA. On 30th of December 2014, the Shenzhen Intermediate People’s Court held the trial as the case is still on that trial.

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Does Story Plot Plagiarism Constitute Copyright Infringement in China?

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(By You Yunting) Introduction to the Case:

In the first half of 2014, Palace 3: the Lost Daughter is a 2014 Chinese historical television series written and produced by Yu Zheng. In April 2014, a Taiwanese writer Chiung Yao made a letter claimed that Palace 3: the Lost Daughter (the “disputed show) was based on her novel Plum Blossom Scar (the “reference novel”), but Yu Zheng delayed. On May 28, 2014, Chiung Yao filed a lawsuit, claiming that Yu Zheng was unauthorized to copy her original core plot, recompose the disputed drama and produce and broadcast the disputed show with another 4 defendants. Chiung Yao thought that Yu Zheng had seriously violated her right of adaptation and cinematization, causing great mental damage, and requested Yu Zheng to immediate stop infringement, eliminate influences, make an apology and compensation of RMB 20 million for economic loss.

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Does Tudou.com Require Permission for the Use of YYeTs’ Unauthorized Subtitle Translation in China?

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(By You Yunting) YYeTs is one of fansub groups in China, which translated foreign films and television program and subtitled into a language other than that of the original by fans (not officially licensed translator). YYeTs have translated many foreign films and television programs and developed very fast in China.

Recently,  YYeTs claimed that, as Tudou.com used, without permission, YYeTs’ subtitle translation for the video of the Voice and deleted the names of translator, YYeTs tried to negotiate with Tudou.com but was blamed for illegal translation. That raised a question: without the permission of the right holder for the Voice, could YYeTs’ translation receive protection from the Copyright Law?

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What are the Difficulties in the Online Copyright Enforcement in China?

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(By You Yunting) Within the World Intellectual Property Day approaching, Zhihu.com invited me to answer some questions about the popularization of intellectual property rights with the first one below regarding what the difficulties are in the online copyright enforcement in China.

The Copyright Law aims to protect many types of works, including cinematographic works, television, written works, works of fine arts and graphic works. However, there are different kinds of infringement. When referring to whether relates to Internet, it can distinguish into online infringement and offline infringement. When referring to the infringement methods, it may include unauthorized reproduction and personate plagiarism. When talking about infringing any specific rights, it may discuss the right of modification, the right of integrity and so on. Now that I think about it, I’d like to narrow it down to a topic regarding what difficulties are in the online copyright enforcement China.

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Parody on Copyrighted Works Could Be Infringement? I

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the parodic portrait of ancient Chinese poet DU FU

By Albert Chen

On 7th June, 2012, the committee affiliated to Agencies for Cultural Affairs deliberated on the issues that could the derivative works and parody constitute the infringement to copyright (note: the link is in Chinese). And that marks the Japanese government facing up to the common problems KUSO in the country.

As a country with well-developed culture industry, Japan sees a large number of original cultural creations within the nation every year, including the cartoons, movies, games, etc. On the other hand, the derivatives of the existing works are also common in the country with the parody included. The trend of parody in Japan also influences the literature works of China, and thereby we see Lin Daiyu, the character in the noted A Dream in the Red Mansion, becomes a courtesan, the Monkey King begins to date with his master, and the generals in the Romance of Three Kingdoms have all been coquettes.

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Analysis on the Copyright Infringement on Microblog

On 30th December, the Annual Conference of Sohu Weibo Client (weibo is just kind of microbloggng service like twitter in China), 2011 was held in Beijing, and Sohu (NASDAQ: SOHU) first issued the Weibo Copyright Protection Convention among the four main microblogging platforms in China, which verifies that the author may enjoy the copyright over its tweets, and accordingly Sohu will provide protecton on it, respect its authorized use and offer aids in the legal protection. However, for the tweets tend to be brief, therefore its protection by Copyright Law has been long argued. And here is the analysis from Bridge IP Law Commentary on it.

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China Supreme Court’ s Advanced Judge Commented on Microblog Copyright Protection

As reported by Beijing News, Judge Kong Xiangjun, the head of third adjudication division of IPR cases in Supreme People’s Court, stated that the hearing standard of Weibo copyright conflict shall by those for general cyber copyright conflict.

According to the previous judicial interpretation from the Supreme People’s Court, it demanded the court to balance the interest among the oblige, ISP and social public, for one hand the cyber copyright protection shall be strengthened, and also the hearing shall promote the innovation and the business model development to ensure the social public interest.

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Could Ungranted Movie’ s Copyright be Protected in China？

—Discussion on the Protection over the Prohibited Works by China Laws

Although China is among the few countries attempting to control the ideology, the rule of law is progressing in this country. Currently, the previously unprotected works, like the pornography or ungranted published works, all could be protected by the Copyright Law.

In recent, Shanghai Pudong People’s Court judged an infringement case of the cyber disseminated movie, and in the case the legal owner of the movie, which however has no administrative license for public show, was protected by the judgment and the owner’s claim of compensation was also supported.

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Could Tweets be Protected by Copyright Law in China?

Some net friends ask lawyers of Bridge IP Law Commentary on the http://www.zhihu.com/ (the Quora in China) that whether the original contents in the microblog could be protected by Copyright Law, and if can, how they are protected. Our replies are as follows:

1. The tweets could be the works as specified in the Copyright Law when they are original, despite they could only contain 140 characters. However, when the tweets only have a single word “Ah!” or the normal phrase like “It’s a fine day today”, then such microblogs could not be the legal works and could not be protected by Copyright Law.

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Analysis on the Legal Nature of Registration Code Cracking Software in China

The cyber age is a big challenge to the company like Microsoft, Adobe and Autodesk whose income mainly comes from the stand-alone software, for any netizen could get access to the copyrighted software easily through internet.

To prevent the easy software copy and pirating, the company tends to use the registration code or serial number for the software activation, or to adopt the DRM (digital right management) technology. However, a new problem is probably arousing after the old is settled, the solution of cracking is developed for such registration codes. Bridge IP Law Commentary today will analyze the legal responsibility for such cracking,

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Legal Commentary on the case of Founder VS P&G and Chinese Character, II

—Analysis on the law Nature of the Works of Word Stock

Today’s essay follows “Legal Commentary on the case of Founder VS P&G and Chinese Character, I”

(2) The Founder Word Stock is the composite works

The Stock here refers to the Founder Word Stock composing all the individual words in it rather than the stock software. The new works come from the selection or arrangement of the existing works is called the composite works. In our opinion, it’s necessary for Founder to apply the copyright registration for the whole Stock since only focusing on the determination of the copyrighted works over the Stock Software or the individual words is not enough. And such registration could benefit the protection over the Stock against any other infringement, such as to print a book or magazine in the script in the Stock with no license.

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Legal Commentary on the copyright infringement case of Founder Electronics VS P&G, I

—Analysis on the law Nature of the Works of Chinese Character Word Stock

Highlight: Today and tomorrow, Bridge IP Law Commentary will introduce and analyze you the case of script copyright conflict between Founder and P&G, and also the system of word stock works behind the case. And the following is the first half—the introduction on the case and the part analysis on the nature of the works of word stock.

On the morning of 5th July, 2011, the appeal of the Founder Electronics (HKEX:0418, 0618) was rejected by the No.1 Intermediate People’s Court of Beijing in its case of the script copyright conflict against P&G (NYSE: PG), and the decision of the first hearing was supported. The final judgment maintains an ambiguous attitude towards the determination of “飘柔”, the localized name of the Rejoice brand of P&G , to be a fine art works, neither to support it or opposite it.

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