Analysis Of The Peking Univesity Founder V. Blizzard Entertainment Font Infringement

Maturity of internet technology and popularization of usage of computer here in China flourish the development of the font library industry, while after a short-term flourishing, such industry goes decayed rapidly. And the fundamental reason should be that infringements occur frequently due to ambiguity of its legal status, and the rights of the font developers cannot be well protected, thus they gradually lose their motivations for creation and the perspectives for development of this industry become gloomy. The case Founder v. Snowstorm on the font library infringement has lasted for three years with a disputed amount reaching RMB 408 million. This has so far been the biggest amount a Chinese company claiming against a foreign company after China was accessed to WTO, thus it has drawn attention from many aspects of schools, practice fields and public opinion. There are two arguments under this case, one being whether Founder Lanting Font could be regarded as a “Works”under the Copyright Law and the other being whether usage of Founder Lanting Font by Snowstorm could be defined as infringement of the rights of Founder. The society by following up with this case also propose some questions, including without limited to how to define legal nature of computer font library, what kinds of legal protection models shall be taken to protect legal rights of computer font library developers, and what criterion shall be set up to define an infringement of a computer font library. There is no doubt that it is insufficient in protceting the right of computer font right on law.This problem arises on some aspects as below: First, it is deficiency in definition of computer font right on law; second, there is not a agreed orininal judgemental standard; and the most important is that there is not a relevant guarantee mechanism for the right of computer font. In my opinion, we can do the things as follows to improve the law protection: 1) include font library into neighboring rights of copyright in the Copyright Law for protection; 2) specify legal attribute of font library and font library soft wares; 3) specify the application of fair use doctrine; 4) specify a reasonable term for copyright of font library; 5) settle the scope of the right by end user license agreement of font library software; and 6) build up systems for examination, grant and registration of such right.