Study Of Copyright Protection For Television Program Formats

In our country, the legal situation of TV programs template is very awkward at present,and it hindered the progress of program template protection work. The copyright law makeclear regulation that "This law protection the work that said in a certain form." But theprogram templates that lack of well-defined, are citing "the TV programs template is just away of thinking", and pushed out of the scope of copyright protection; the template’s owncharacteristics makes them unable to meet the requirements of the patent to protect the object,is also unable to use to the relevant provisions; the range of the trademark rights to protect isvery limited, unable to meet the needs of the comprehensive protection. Because of thisvulnerability, often lead that a television spent a large amount of money to introduce theprogram, just to obtain good results, but cloned free by other televisions, in order to improveits rating and gain more advertising, but the cloned television is helpless. In the long term thissituation will lead to that, the first it will make the television introduce the advanced TVprograms template actively is very sad, and loss of the interest; and the second is lead othertelevisions to become lazy, are waiting for the "clone" and no innovation. This will eventuallylead to the entire TV industry cannot forward, and can’t satisfy the spiritual needs of thepublic.To reverse the situation, we should strengthen the protection of intellectual propertyrights of TV programs template, to arbitrary "clone" television’s behavior of the random.Although TV programs template are different from the object of protection by copyright, butrelative to patent and trademark rights, using copyright to protect TV programs template isfeasibility; we must make clear the attribute of TV programs template works, let it into thescope of protection of copyright law; at the same time, improve the system of responsibility,make clear about the boundaries of tort and the tort, To develop the appropriate punishmentstandard; improve the system of TV programs template transfer of copyright, and to promotethe trade of the program template; strengthening the TV programs template copyright industryself-discipline management system, and form a good ethos of industry.