Tag Archives: copyright infringement

Analysis on the Assumption of Liability in the Serv-U Infringement Lawsuit in China

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(By Luo Yanjie) Serv-U is a kind of widely adopted FTP server terminal software, and its main function is to help the transmission of documents on websites. Because the software is relatively small and the normal user has no way to sense the server terminal, many domestic websites in China are now using pirated Serv-U. For this reason, Rhino Software Inc., the developer of Serv-U has been continuously fighting against the piracy of its software, a story which has recently been widely reported. The list of companies sued includes LockLock from South Korea, as well as Netac and eMule, among others. The compensation claimed in these cases ranges from half a million yuan to 1.99 million yuan.

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Tonghuashun VS. Wind and the Judgment Standards for Software Copyright Infringement in China

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(By Luo Yanjie) Recently, Wind Information Co., Ltd (“Wind Info”), a well-known stock speculation software developer in mainland China, made an official announcement that it would sue its competitor Zhejiang Hexin Tonghuashun (300033) to seek RMB 99.22 million yuan in compensation. According to Wind’s spokesman, “more than ninety-nine percent of its software’s function has been copied by Tonghuashun without any changes, including data, organizational structure, column names, connection mode, index, function, text interpretation, parameters, interface, operation or transfer method, and etc.” At present, the ninety-nine percent figure claimed by the spokesman refers to the interface, operation, or transfer method and database. Even if this claim is true, it is still not certain that Tonghuashun has infringed because the judgment of infringement depends on comparison of the source code of both parties’ software. Today, we would like to share the following information on the protection of software copyrights:

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How to Judge the Copyright Holder of Musical Works

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 (By Luo Yanjie) Previously, we introduced how to determine the copyright holder of cinematographic works, and today we would like to continue by introducing how to determine copyright ownership of musical works. Similar to cinematographic works, we have confronted situations in infringement cases in which it is difficult to determine the copyright holder of musical work. For example, in one case the copyright conducted in mainland China was licensed by an overseas rights holder, but the name in the signed and issued license was different from what was written on the original CD. Although the issue might have come from a mistake in the translation, it still created a real obstacle for the rights holder. Now, let’s take a look on the way to determine the copyright holder of musical work in China.

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How to Judge the Copyright Holder of Cinematographic Work in China?

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(By Luo Yanjie) In a previous infringement case against cinematographic we handled, the plaintiff submitted several articles of evidence to the court, which showed that the work belonged to different copyright holders: according to a certificate issued by the Hong Kong Copyright Center, it was Copyrighter A’s property while the subtitle authorship rights belonged to Copyrighter B. And yet, as demonstrated by a license agreement, C shall be the exclusive holder of the copyright. That made the plaintiff argue for his ownership of the copyright. In fact, due to the complexity in determining copyright ownership, contradictory disputes like the one described above are quite common in actual practice. In today’s post we will share our understanding of the issue.

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Unauthorized Derivative Work Still Receives Protection Under China’s Copyright Law

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By Luo Yanjie

The copyright holder of Pleasant Goat (喜羊羊), a popular Chinese cartoon figure, recently brought actions against the unauthorized use of the character in Flash games on several game websites. According to Chinese copyright law, the copyright holder must give permission to use art in a game, otherwise it will result in infringement. This is easily understood. But, if such an unauthorized game is then used on another website without the original developer’s consent, does this infringe the interests of the game developer? Today’s post will discuss this problem. In my opinion, even if the game developer used the cartoon character to create software without authorization from the copyright holder, the software still receives protection under the Copyright Law, but its protection has definite limits.

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Analysis on Copyright Risks of Duowan YY Music

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By Luo Yanjie

According to a recent news report (note: the link is in Chinese), the Huanju Inc (namely duowan.com), the holding company of YY.com submitted the prospectus to SEC of USA, applying for the IPO in NASDAQ for $ 100 million funding, and the code of it is YY. As indicated in the prospectus, the achievements of YY music have been the most bling-bling part. YY music is actually the music channel of YY instant messenger, introduced in March of 2011, and mainly broadcasting live shows of music performance. The performer could interact with the spectators by Karaoke, singing match or live videos. Furthermore, amounts of virtual products are available on YY music, which could be got on payment or as gifts. Yet to the statement of someone skilled in the art, the mode of YY music is facing the copyright risk. Today’s post would share our opinions on the issue.

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Could Apple Use Objection to Jurisdiction to Prolong the Litigation Period?

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By Albert Chen

The most watched copyright battle between Chinese Writer Alliance (the “Alliance”) and Apple was heard in Beijing No.2 Intermediate People’s Court on the 11th of this month. You may have read our previous essay on the private hearing of the case, and in fact, Apple has also filed an objection to the jurisdiction in the case. Nonetheless, the application was refused by the intermediate court and upheld by the high court after appeal. The lawsuit has been delayed by procedure for nearly half a year, as favored by Apple. Today, we are going to introduce the regulation on the objection to civil jurisdiction in China.

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Legal Analysis on Apple’s Lose in APP Store Infringing Contents of Beijing Litigation

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By Luo Yanjie

Recently, a reporter of TechWeb interviewed You Yunting of our website about issues of Apple providing infringing content as follows:

1, Lots of China writers have sued Apple Inc because its App Store violated their copyright; Encyclopedia of China Publishing House (EPCH) win the case and get 520,000 as compensation. How do you see this kind of cases? Can it become the flag case of mobile Internet copyright?

Personally think it is more suitable to say that it is a flag case for APP Store of Apple, the main significance is as follows:

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Fair Use for Getty’s Picture of Statute?

By Luo Yanjie

    Getty Images (NYSE: GTY) (the “company”or “Getty”) is a company globally known for its picture license business for third party’s use. In general, the company shall appear in the court as the plaintiff, yet as reported in recent (note: the link is in Chinese), Getty was charged in Beijing Haidian People’s Court. The story is: Getty was found by a Chinese statute designer of unlicensed collection of his works into the company’s data base, which was on sale to the public; therefore, he filed a lawsuit against Getty, demanding a compensation. After the hearing, Getty was judged non-fair use in the case, and shall compensate the plaintiff RMB 5, 000 and an apology.

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What Legal Risks for Cloud Storage Providers in China?

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By Luo Yanjie

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.

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Why the Cybercafé could be Exempted from the Liability of Pirate Video Broadcast?

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By You Yunting

In the past few days, a Beijing court published a case (note: the link is in Chinese) involving a cybercafé who has purchased the Video-on-demand (VOD) system, and that made the court refuse the claims of the plaintiff though the right holder proved the piracy in the VOD.

VV8.com Company, a professional video system provider to cybercafé invested by IDG and Disney, detected the pirated TV drama against its copyright in the video system of a cybercafé. And then, the right holder filed a lawsuit against the piracy. The cybercafé afterwards argued that the system was purchased by it from Hero Inc. Company, who is a third party video provider, and in that transaction, both parties has agreed that all the copyright dispute shall be handled by Hero Inc.. Moreover, all the contents in the system are updated and ciphered by Hero Inc. with remote control, thus the cybercafé could not delete any videos in it. In the lawsuits, VV8.com expressed no intention to add Hero Inc. as the co-defendant and make no claim thereby.

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No Infringement of SONY TV’s Unauthorized Cartoon Playing

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By Luo Yanjie

In our past post “How Sony Can Avoid Copyright Risk”, we gave our legal opinion in the copyright infringement charged against SONY. And in that case, SONY integrated the function of networking in a type of its TV products, by which the consumer could watch the cartoon produced by an animation company after registering its TV and the application for an account on an appointed websites under the instruction of SONY. The animation company sued SONY and the website in Beijing after detaining the infringement.

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Search Engine in China: Liability to Infringement in Snapshot?

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the Baidu snapshot

By Luo Yanjie

With the increasing sense of legal protection, the copyright owner are paying more and more attention to the infringing works spread in the internet, especially for the ICP of infringing works, like the video search engine and Wenku (namely the online library). But to the annoy of the copyright owners, when the ICP deletes the infringing content, the page may be remained in the snapshot of the search engine available to the visitors, which makes the effect of right protection may be discounted. Today, we would like to share our opinions on the copyright infringement by snapshot of the search engine in this post:

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Netease VS. Tencent: Copyright Conflict on News APP Design

Recently, the copyright battle on the APP design between Netease (NASDAQ: NTES) and Tencent (SEHK: 700), two major internet companies in China, has been widely reported by local medias, and today’s essay is the digest of the news report and the comments from us.

According to the news of Sina Tech on 12th April afternoon (note: the link is in Chinese), Netease stated its news app has been plagiarized by Rencent and demanded the latter to withdraw the infringing app. It’s also mentioned in Netease’s statement that the Tencent News App for iPhone 2.0 version plagiarizes the layout, comment page, picture page’s design, including the app function and the appearance design.

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