Study On Legal Protection Of Electronic Game Works

As an emerging industry in the cultural creativity field,video game industry is an important part of China’s cultural industry.The national “13th Five-Year Plan” has clearly proposed that China is planning to develop its cultural industry into a pillar of the national economy.As a big part of the cultural industry,the sound development of the video game industry is closely related to the development and prosperity of the national cultural industry.In recent years,China’s video game industry has seen massive development,as evidenced by its operation revenues in 2014 that are more than three times of the box office returns in the same period.In 2016,the actual sales revenues of the game market have increased to 165.57 billion.However,behind the economic data with high-speed growth,it is legal disputes concerning video games works going on a growth spurt.Especially in 2016,such a typical event as explosive growth of mobile game sales revenue got the mobile game industry caught in plagiarism storm,the web game industry the “unskilled copying” controversy,and the client game industry a homogenization dilemma.Then,for a time,industry chaos appears one after another,bringing huge obstacles to the healthy and long-term development of the emerging video game industry.The development of the industry as a whole was almost stuck in an odd cycle of plagiarism and high homogeneity.When the time comes to 2018,with the further development of the network communication technology,there was a decrease in the number of traditional infringements against video game client,and more and more infringements were charactered by concealment and complication,and infringements such as unauthorized direct use,counterfeiting,misappropriation,and the use of search link technology to maliciously obfuscate the names of others’ game works also began to appear on a large scale.The form of infringement on the content of game works has also become increasingly diversified.The infringement object almost covers all the game elements,with a game’s static game elements,dynamic game screen,special identifiable game materials,in-game fonts and music,gameplay and game rules all having become the possible infringement targets.A series of new forms of legal disputes,such as infringement disputes over game live screen,infringement disputes over competitive game performers,infringement disputes over game rules,and infringement disputes over game names,have once again attracted the attention of the judicial practice circle and the legal theory circle.What is not commensurate with the rapidly increasing number of disputes in video game works in reality is the serious lack of attention given to video game works at the legislative level,which is prominently manifested by the vague legal attributes of video game works and the unclear legal protection model for game works.These institutional defects directly lead to inadequate protection of original game works in specific cases,and of original game works that is researched and developed by creators at the price of huge time cost and economic cost in terms of protection degree and scope of protection.The ambiguity of the legal protection model also allows creators of game works to be at a loss in the face of serious infringements of their rights and interests such as plagiarism,unskilled copying,and imitation.They usually don’t know which approaches they could use or which rights they must assert to protect their game works.What’s worse,tempted by the profitability of such operating mode,some operators even take advantage of the lag nature and vagueness in new-type intelligent achievement protection of the protection mode based on the “legal object” of copyright law as well as the uncertainty of juridical adjudication caused thereby.They turn a blind eye to basic commercial ethics,attempt to skirt the requirements of law,and copy constituent elements in others’ game works at will,which undoubtedly intensify chaotic phenomena of plagiarism,unskilled copying and high-degree homogenization in the game industry.In the course of video game industry development,the most pressing and urgent problem is to figure out how to effectively regulate the above-mentioned industry chaos of video game industry,how to provide reasonable legal solutions for the characteristics of video game works and the current problems,and how to protect the legitimate rights and interests of game creators and right holders.Although there exist various problems in the level of legal norms,such as the absence of legal provisions and the ambiguity in the application of norms,China’s judicial practice has begun a series of beneficial exploration under existing legal systems to solve the above-mentioned problems,and several judicial cases of demonstration value have also appeared,Thus,a set of judicial rules aiming to provide legal protection to video game works is basically formed.However,there is a lack of theoretical refinement and summary of judicial logics and rules in these judicial practices,and many theoretical problems still need to be further clarified.In view of this,this paper,based on legal texts and legal theories for theoretical research,takes China’s judicial cases of game infringement disputes as empirical research materials,to systematically analyze the status quo and problems in the legal protection of video game works,and put forward specific ideas and countermeasures to solve the problems from the perspective of exploring judicial countermeasures to solve practical disputes and in the form of a combination of theory and example,so as to provide judicial countermeasures for the practical problems in the legal protection of video game works and offer ideas for solving theoretical problems,thus facilitating the further perfection of China’s legal protection system of video game works.It should be noted that,protecting video game works requires a variety of legal cooperation and concerted efforts.Given that the issues regarding the copyright and the right of fair competition of authors of video game works are among the most complicated issues that are most be mentioned and have always been controversial,therefore,this paper,taking Copyright Law and Anti-unfair Competition Law as the vision,probes into the copyright law protection and anti-unfair competition law protection of video game works and their coordination and complementary relationship.In addition to the introduction and conclusion,the text of this paper consists of the following five chapters.Chapter one gives a comprehensive introduction to the category of video game works,the object of study of this paper.Since the concept of "video game" is not clearly defined in existing normative documents of law,and the establishment of legal concepts is the foundation for legal thinking and legal reasoning,in view of this,the author has conducted a systematic research on the concept of "video game works" from the view of related disciplines.On the basis of meticulously combing the characteristics and classification of video game works,this paper summarizes the characteristics of video game works in a more concise way to precisely propose the legal concept of video game works,and clearly defines the legal attribute of video game works.Chapter two provides an empirical investigation and analysis of the legal protection of video game works in China.Based on the sample analysis of infringement litigation cases in China’s game industry in the past three years,this chapter carefully organizes the forms of infringement acts that have plagued China’s video game industry in recent years,as well as the handling of relevant disputes,and reveals the current situation and trend of legal protection of video game works in China’s judicial practice,hence specifying that it is the copyright law and the anti-unfair competition law that mainly provide protection for video game works in China’s judicial practice,among which the relevant legal norms of the copyright law system have served as the main basis for resolving video game infringement disputes,and the anti-unfair competition law has become an important part of the video game legal protection system.Chapter three focuses on the main dispute settlement basis – Copyright Law,which provides the legal protection to video game works.Firstly,it starts with the status quo of protection to video game works provided by the copyright law system,combines with relevant judicial practices,and puts forward three problems in the protection of video game works provided by the current copyright law system,which respectively are: the ambiguity of standard application caused by not being included in the legal works,the failure of individual game elements after splitting to meet the conditions of legal works,and the difficulty of certain core elements to seek relief in the copyright system.Secondly,it analyzes the above three questions separately and answers them in a specific way.Based on the classification protection of computer programs and other game materials,it is supposed to add a holistic angle of view and consider the pictures,sounds and other game effects shown in the operation of video games as a whole.In the path of genre film,the audiovisual game materials that meet the conditions are being protected as the component of genre film as a whole,and the limitation of copyright law protection for the game elements,which are incompatible with protection principles of copyright law,should dare to recognize.Finally,taking each element in the actual games as an example,it makes an exemplary application analysis on the concrete application of video game works in the light of the relevant theories and methods of infringement identification in the copyright law protection path.Chapter four focuses on the important content of the legal protection system for video games--Anti-unfair Competition Law,which provides the legal protection to video game works.Firstly,it starts with a question why anti-unfair competition law can provide supplementary protection to video games,and theoretically analyzes the reason that anti-unfair competition law is involved in the knowledge product market from the perspective of rationality,necessity and feasibility,respectively.Secondly,it explores and analyzes the judicial application of anti-unfair competition law in the legal protection for video game works in the form of case study,concluding that: the anti-unfair competition law’s prohibitions of market confusion act,misleading and false propaganda,as well as its general provisions play an important role in dealing with infringement disputes of video games.In the process of judicial protection for video games,there is a phenomenon that copyright law and anti-unfair competition law are crossed applicable in practice.However,the cross-protection mode of anti-unfair competition law and copyright law being cross applicable to jointly provide legal protection for video game works may lead to the theoretical dilemma of legal competition and cooperation when the above-mentioned legal provisions are applied concretely.As to the possible dispute over the application of relevant legal norms of anti-unfair competition law and copyright law,the traditional supplementary protection theory needs to be concretized,in order to enhance its explanatory power on the priority of specific law application.More precisely,it is necessary to clarify the relationship between the relevant clauses of anti-unfair competition law and that of copyright law,so that the role of anti-unfair competition law can be better played in the supplementary protection of video game works.Only by accurately affirming the number of infringement acts and legal benefits that need to be protected in the case,can we protect the video game works reasonably,fully and completely,at the same time,avoid providing repetitive and excessive protection to specific game elements,and avoid destroying the balance of intellectual property right system.Chapter five proposes perfecting suggestion about the legal protection system for video game works in China.Based on the previous analysis,it focuses on the key issues discussed above in overall response to the copyright attribute legislative gaps,copyright infringement judgment methods lacking statutory basis and ambiguity of game infringement judgment methods in applicable norms,existing in the copyright protection path of video game works,as well as repeated protection in the protection path of anti-unfair competition law of video game works.In order to provide more reasonable,full and effective legal protection for video game works,it is necessary to further clarify the copyright attribute identification of video game works,strengthen and perfect the infringement judgement system of video game works,at the same time,pay special attention to the coordination of the relationship among internal articles of law in the path of competition law protection of video game works,and the dynamic balance between anti-unfair competition law and copyright law.The innovation of this paper is as follows: first,the author chose legal questions that have only recently become concentrated in the rapid development of new forms of intellectual achievements in emerging markets as the research focus,different from the research perspective of traditional intellectual property law,which is of certain innovation and novelty due to the addition of the research perspective of economic law and the visual angle of market participants.Second,the author closely followed the practical problems in the judicial practice of video game works,took the cases of video game infringement action over the past three years as the analysis samples,and with the help of typed analysis methods,presented the judicial protection provided by China’s judicial practice to video game works and the actual vision of legal disputes in the game industry.To a certain extent,this makes up for lack of systematization of current case studies and lack of standardization of current empirical studies.In the theoretical analysis of each chapter,the interpretation of examples were included,showing relatively strong consciousness of problems,and achievable interpretation paths and improvement suggestions were put forward for the current situation.Also,the perspectives of industry practitioners and relevant right holders were added in the analysis of law application,which enhances the practicability of this paper and has certain guiding significance to right holders’ current rights-safeguarding dilemma.Third,the author more detailedly combed the theories neglected in judicial practice,which is mainly reflected in two parts.In the analysis of theoretical basis and theoretical dilemma of anti-unfair competition law being involved in intellectual products,the author perfected the explanatory power of the traditional supplementary protection theory,clearly summed up the possible problems of the theory,and put forth the corresponding improvement suggestions.Moreover,in the analysis of the competition and cooperation relationship among specific articles of law,the author took a large number of legal disputes of video game works as examples and carried out a more detailed and meticulous research with a certain degree of innovation.In the category definition of video game works,the author made a more comprehensive and systematic summary of the existing literature from the multi-disciplinary research perspective,and innovatively put forward the legal concept of video game works,clearly defined the legal attribute of video game works,and made up for systematic deficiency and insufficient pertinence in the past research.