The Legal Regulation Of Copyright Collective Management Organization’s Monopolistic Behavior

The system of copyright collective management is an important part of the modern copyright law system. Despite the prosperity of the development of our copyright collective management organization, the first copyright collective management organization of China only exist20years from the inception to the present. The study focused on the understanding of the copyright collective management organization, the introduction of the copyright collective management system and the issue of fees.Although a few of scholars turned to research the relationship between copyright collective management organization and antitrust, but they haven’t reached agreement for the issue of copyright collective management organization’s mode choice and the relationship between exercise of copyright and antitrust laws. Copyright collective management organization in our country is a non-profit community group. It is different from guild. Exploring the legal regulation of copyright collective management organization’s monopolistic behavior has a very important significance in the background of the formulation of the guide on antitrust enforcement in the field of intellectual property and the modification of the Copyright Law.Copyright is one of private rights, has exclusivity, but it can’t be abused. Copyright collective management organization has the right to manage copyrights due to the authorization of the rights’holder or the reciprocal representation agreements or statutory license for copyright collective management of rights. The copyright collective management organization should comply with the relevant law. The abuse of the copyright’s exclusivity should be regulated by the anti-monopoly law.At present, the world copyright collective management organizations can be divided into two categories:monopolistic collective management organizations and competitive collective management organizations. The monopolistic collective management organizations can be subdivided into the integrated monopolistic collective management organizations and discrete monopolistic collective management organizations. Monopoly behavior of different types of copyright collective management organization is different. Competitive collective management organizations may violate the provisions of the anti-monopoly law on monopoly agreements or concentration of business operators. It is also possible of violating the provisions of the anti-monopoly law on abuse of market dominance when a few of competitors form a monopoly position from a successful market competition. Monopolistic collective management organizations easily abuse of dominant market position to exclude or restrict competition.Dominant market position of the copyright collective management organization is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the copyright collective management organization has the economies of scale after managing a lot of copyrights, which effectively reduces costs. On the other hand, dominant market position of the copyright collective management organization can be easily abused to bring harm to the owners of the copyright and the users of works. So, how to regulate the market behavior of copyright collective management organization to prevent abuse of copyright or the abuse of a dominant market position is a common topic of different countries. They mostly regulate the monopolistic behavior of the copyright collective management organization by means of copyright law, copyright collective management law and antitrust law.The law in our country protects copyright collective management organization’s dominant market position. We take the mode of discrete monopolistic collective management organization. It opens the door of abusing of dominant market position for the copyright collective management organization. At present, we have no specialized laws to regulate the monopolistic behavior of copyright collective management organization. It should be applied to the anti-monopoly law. There are problems of improper legal intervention and lack of antitrust implementing rules and lack of effective supervision in the regulation of monopolistic behavior of copyright collective management organization in our country’s law system. I suggest to completing relevant copyright laws, collective management laws and antitrust laws, strengthening supervision and establishing specialized dispute resolution mechanism.