Conflict Of Rights Posed By Overlapping Intellectual Property Protection Concerning Works Of Fine Art

When different laws provide protections from different angles for an identicalobject, overlapping protection emerges. And when various rights on the identicalobject that overlapping protection brings on are separately owned by different subjects,the conflict between these rights may arise. Works of fine art are protected by thecopyright law from the date of completion. If they are used on industrial products,they may be applied for industrial design patents. If they are used as marks for goodsor services, the works of fine art may also be applied for registered trademarks.Therefore, the problem of conflict of rights concerning works of fine art seems to bemore outstanding because the identical work of fine art may receive overlappingprotection from several laws. The emphasis of this article is to discuss the conflict ofrights that overlapping protection brings on between the copyright, the trademark rightand the patent right for design relating to works of fine art.After simply introducing the conflict and the overlapping protection betweenintellectual property rights, the article describes several types of representation of theconflict that overlapping protection brings on between intellectual property rightsconcerning works of fine art combining typical domestic cases in the last few years.By means of analyzing the works of fine art as intellectual property objects and therationality of the existence of overlapping protection, the article expounds that thelegislation for resolving the right conflict that overlapping protection brings on shouldput emphasis on fairly and reasonably balancing the conflict of interest between everyparties rather than on avoiding the conflict of rights by reducing overlapping protection.Moreover, the article also introduces the relevant provisions of resolving the rightconflict in Chinese laws, and explores principles of handling the conflict betweenintellectual property rights and measures that the obligees may adopt to avoid andresolve the conflict of rights. At the end, the article analyzes the present problemsduring handling the conflict of rights in our country, especially during resolving theconflict of rights through legal channels, proposing relevant countermeasures anddealing with the rationality that courts verify the prior right and start the procedure ofhanding the conflict of right.