The Research On The Legal Protection Of Television Program Format

The trade in TV program format has become an international industry, which hasa great market potential and commercial value, its central role in the TV industrycompetition gets more and more recognition. But the “cloned” storm in TV industryfrom home and abroad in recent years makes the contradiction between the orderlydevelopment of TV industry and inadequate protection of intellectual propertyincreasingly prominent, it has become a common focus in TV industry and the legalprofession on how to protect TV program format effectively. The legal professiongenerally support the establishment of such a protection system, which is based oncopyright law, and supplemented by Anti-Unfair Competition Law, but from thecurrent legislative system of copyright law, no matter the international convention oncopyright protection, or national copyright laws, the TV program format is notincluded, the judicial practice of the United States and Europe is also difficult toprotect the TV program format in copyright law. Although some of the elements ofthe TV program format could be protected by copyright laws separately, for example,the set of stage is protected as art works, the background music is protected as themusical works, but subject to the restriction of idea/expression dichotomy, TVprogram format, as creative things can’t be protected as overall form by copyright law.Anti-Unfair Competition Law can protect TV program format in some extent, but alsofacing some difficulties. This article makes a comparative study of the legal protection of the Chinese andforeign TV program format with the way of comparation study and the caseanalyzation, and puts forward the currently domestic protection advice on the basis ofthe foreign study. With the trende of many scholars at home and abroad standing forputting the TV program format under the protection of the copyright law, the writerhas an opposed attitude(the special reason seeing in the epilogue),this is also a greatinnovation of this article.This article is divided into four chapters:In the first chapter, the writer puts forword the research on the legal protection oftelevision program format through case disputes, and summarizes the understandingof Chinese and foreign scholars on the concept of TV program format, and then pointout that the lack of legal definition is the big barrier to protect TV program formatcurrently.The second chapter focuses on TV program format protection in copyright law,starting from the reason why the copyright law can’t protect it effectively, and make acomparative study of copyright law legislation in the countries of European andAmerican legal systems and civil law systems, judicial practices, as well as domesticcopyright law on TV program format conservation status, and point out that there’restill many difficulties in protecting the TV program format through copyright Lawunder the current legal system.The third chapter explores diversification protection mode of TV program formatthrough Anti-Unfair Competition Law, Trademark law, Industry organizations andself-disciplines.The fourth chapter puts forword a series of recommendations to protect TVprogram format in the current domestic legal system on the basis of foreigntheoretical study and practices on protection of TV program format...