Study Of Idea/Expression Dichotomy On Copyright Law

Idea/expression Dichotomy is considered as the most fundamental framework andprinciple of copyright law, whose importance is widely acknowledged by every country’sjudicial practice and copyright law system, after its debut in19th century in US. As amember of many international treaties like TRIPS, China has not yet officially confirmthis principle in its copyright legislation before the third amendment of copyright law.This phenomenon is considered to be a deficiency while China’s copyright law judicialpractice has already addressed this issue at a certain degree.This is also one of the reasons why China’s judicial practice of copyright lawsubsists with certain amount of questions when applying this rule, which primarilyreflects on the distinct application of originality standard of expression, ignorance of thefunction of idea/expression dichotomy in copyright infringement conclusion, nosystematic methods of establishing a fine line between idea and expression. In addition,even though the statute law clearly provides this rule, the issue of differentiating betweenidea and expression is still regarded as one of the toughest issue in copyrightinfringement cases coming before the court. No matter US’s courts or the courts in civillaw system countries, like German and Japan, they all developed a set of methods todistinguish idea and expression in their judicial practice. Study of these cases will be factually meaningful on how to better apply this rule by China’s courts, no matter on theaspects of clarifying the guideline and methods of distinguishing idea and expression, aswell as the interactional relationship with other principles in copyright law when dealingwith copyright law infringement.This thesis is divided into FIVE parts:The First Part is Introduction, which introduces the current situation of China on theissue of idea/expression dichotomy, as well as the existing problems of its judicialpractice.The Second Part briefly explains the basic meaning of idea/expression dichotomy,and further discusses its reasonableness. The concept of idea/expression dichotomyembodies different explanations in our country preciously, and we shall understand this ina broad sense. In respect to the object of protection of copyright law, we shallunderstands it as “original expression of each work”, rather than “form of expression”.Apart from this, the reasonableness for designing of the framework of idea/expressiondichotomy shall be subsisting in the balance between the public and the copyright holders,reflecting the property of work and its purposes, ensuring the freedom of expression andpromoting the prosperousness of culture.The Third Part primarily discusses how to distinguish between idea and expressionwhen it comes to copyright infringement, and how it can be applied in those cases. Thischapter firstly introduces and analyzes the case law of US which has a betterdevelopment in this area, as well as some typical methods in certain civil law systemcountries. It then incorporates specific types of works to explain the methods ofapplication of this rule in different types of works respectively. In short, the application ofthis rule shall be considered case by case.The Fourth Part mainly aims at the issue of China’s judicial practice in this area, andput forward a detailed analysis to this issue as a response. This chapter firstlyconcentrates on the re-consideration of China’s legislation on this area, pointing out the deficiency of our legislation, then specifically analyzes certain problems in regard to theapplication of this rule in China’s judicial practice, and come up with proposals on how toapply this rule correctly.The Fifth Part is Conclusion, which comprehensively discusses the core content ofthis paper, and strengthening writer’s viewpoint again in accordance to the wholeexplanation above.