Research On The Protection Of Ideas In Copyright Law

The importance of ideas, as well as the urgency and necessity of idea protection, is rising increasingly. Which legal approach can protect ideas best is the key of studying idea protection. Though ideas mostly exist as works of copyright law, according to a traditional principle of copyright law-idea/expression dichotomy, those ideas are excluded form the protection of copyright law. Other approaches to ideas protection, such as contract law, the law of trade secrets, trademark law and patent law, are all limited in this issue, because of the difference of the characters of subject matter and qualification, thereby, bringing an embarrassment of idea protection in jurisprudence.In this paper, I tried to reposition idea/expression dichotomy which excludes ideas from copyright protection, and cast about for the proper approach and reasonable method for idea protection of china, by analyzing foreign cases.At first, this paper starts with defining the character and the concept of ideas protected by law, and analyzing the embarrassment of legislative and judicial situation for idea protection. Then, get the conclusion that copyright is the inevitable choice of idea protection by analyzing the feasibility of property right protection for ideas.Secondly, this article proceed to compare three approaches to idea protection (first, establish an Idea Property Right beyond Intellectual Property Law; second, establish an Idea Right as a new type of intellectual property right; third, construe or amend the copyright law to include ideas.) by analysis of cost and profit in legislation and balance of benefit, concluding that the third approach can achieve best balance of benefit and get best legislative ratio.Thirdly, it goes on to discuss a traditional principle named idea/expression dichotomy which bars idea protection in copyright law. After a fresh look and reposition of this old principle, we found that the ideas discussed in this paper are not the idea in idea/expression dichotomy, and it can be protected by copyright law.Finally, with the judicial precedent of foreign country, this paper designs some special rules for idea protection in copyright law in the light of the nature of ideas. Those rules include the registration of ideas, jurisdictional examination for the nature of ideas, and the use of "substantial similarity" to determine whether there is a infringement.