Research On Copyright Protection Of Works Of Applied Art

The works of applied art is a relatively new type of works, and the provisions of it in current Copyright Law is not clear. The third draft amendment of the Copyright Law defined the works of applied art as an independent type of works, but there are still many contentious issues of the copyright protection of works of applied art in theory and in practice. This paper attempts to study related issues in order to provide theoretical guidance and practical advice to the judicial practice of works of applied art.This paper compared legislation and judicial practice about the scope of protection of works of applied art in the United States, France and Japan by the comparative analysis methods. The three countries represent different stages of copyright protection development of the works of applied art and the different attitudes, what is important to improve relevant laws and regulations of our country. Meanwhile, this paper use the historical analysis methods to research the development process which is about our copyright protection of works of applied art starting from scratch, the different issues at different stages, the argument of legitimacy and the specific issues, so that the theory of copyright protection of works of applied art has been enriched and improved constantly. In addition, the paper also cited some cases at home and abroad, to find and analyze the problem about the judicial practice, so that we can get closer to reality and provide better reference for practice.The main part of this paper is divided into six chapters. The first chapter is mainly based on the existing results of the research on the definition of works of applied art, and it analyzed the basic characteristics and attributes of works of applied art, so that it arrived at the definition of works of applied art and listed manifestation of the works of applied art. The second chapter introduces the principles of dichotomy of idea and expression, coordination of works of applied art and design patents,and utility industry value of works of applied art, and demonstrates that works of applied art can be protected by the copyright law. The third chapter introduced the law and judicial practice on whether the practical elements and artistic elements of works of applied art are separable in the United States, France and Japan in depth, and compared the advantages and disadvantages of these countries’ practices, in order to explore the practice for our country and provide a basis. The fourth chapter analyzed the substance of artistic judgment of works of applied art, and proved that the artistic criterion of the works of applied art should be equivalent to the criterion of the works of fine art. The fifth chapter putted forward two steps of judging the works of applied art, from a practical point of view. The first step is judging whether it is belonging to the practical artwork or not, and the second step is judging whether it is original and replicable. In addition, infringement judgment should exclude the impact of practical elements properly. When we come to the coordination of the design patents and the works of applied art, this chapter demonstrated that design patents and the works of applied art are independent, and elucidated some problems, for example, the problem about that the implementation of a spent design patent does not infringe copyright. The sixth chapter summed up the main points of this paper on the works of applied art, in order to protect the rights of works of applied art better, to encourage the innovation of works of applied art and to promote healthy development of the works of applied art industry, and putted forward feasible suggestions for copyright protection practices of the works of applied art.