The Study On The Legal Regulation Of Copycatting Games’ Intellectual Property Right

Copycatting games emerge and prosperous develop in games industry recent years, with the following reasons: enormous profit, playing a waiting strategy base on the short cycle game and longtime lawsuit procedure, complicate and variable copycatting ways, less effective right-claming because of the difficulty in collecting evidence and vogue in identification of infringement.Game is run through computer programs and database. The computer programs gather information by the players’ operation at backstage; data resource such as sound, role, stage, dialogue and items, is presented to players by display and acoustic system.According to game copycatting, infringement is divided into the following types: the plagiarize of originality and playing rules, the plagiarize of games’ element like name,role, stage, and copycatting of the name, figure and trademark of well-known games.This article analyzes the intellectual property right concerning with 3 types copycatting games with the following parts:Firstly, identify the legal attribute of games. With the influential IP case of games and dichotomy between thought and expression, the originality and playing rules, not identified as expression, therefore are not protected by copyright law but by laws concerning unfair competition. The elements of games can be separately protected base on the theory of originality.Secondly, how to identify the infringement of copycatting games has not reach the unanimous opinions in juridical practice. This article aims to establish the standard by two aspects: substantial similarity after reach the original game and originality, to establish the way to identify different infringements according to the games’ operating procedure.Thirdly, in order to regularize and give guidance to the optimum development of game industry, base on the reason and attributes of copycatting games, this part provides the system to stratify the laws and regulations, introduces the ways for copycatting companies to imitative innovation, enforce the law-enforcements and the self-regulation of industry.