A Study On The Legal Problems Of The Protection And Utilization Of Orphan Works

Orphan works is still in copyright protection period, which potential users are still unable to get in touch with its owner to get the use authorization. The copyright automatically obtain is the root cause of the orphan works’existence. Long copyright protection period exacerbated the formation of orphan works. The popularity of the internet, the development of information technology is the catalyzer of a large number of orphan works. The existence of orphan works has led to series of social and legal issues, and the direct user who is not authorized by the copyright owner, may have to face with the risk of infringement. If he/she gives up for fear of infringing, the value of the use of such works is attributed to nothing, resulting in a waste of resources. Public rights of accessing to orphan works and the interests of the owner must reach a balance which is the legislative purpose of the system of protection and use of orphan works.About the mode of use of orphan works, adopted by the United States is limit the relief system. Canada and Japan are using compulsory licensing mode to solve the orphan works problem. The EU has also proposed solutions. China has the issue of orphan works like the other countries. However, China’s copyright law does not refer to "orphan works" and there is very little law related to the orphan works. So, based on the analysis of foreign orphan works, my paper propose the basic principles and the system framework of building orphan works protection and utilization system in order to solve the issues of the orphan works.In this thesis, the main analysis to solve the problem of the protection and use of orphan works are the following four parts:Chapter I:The conception of orphan works. This chapter focuses on countries of the proposed concept of orphan works, analyses its conflict and similarities, defines the scope of the orphan works.Chapter II:The necessity to establish orphan works protection system. This section is mainly about the social and legal issues caused by the existence of orphan works.Chapter Ⅲ:Western countries orphan works system protection mode. This chapter describes the various modes of the United States, Canada, Japan, the European Union and other countries and organizations on the protection and use of orphan works, and analyses the pros and cons of each mode.Chapter IV:Build our system of the use of orphan works. This chapter analyzes the current situation of orphan works problem, and proposes the establishment of the basic principles of the use patterns of orphan works and puts forward specific proposals to build our orphan works system from the legislative, judicial, administrative point of view.