How The Court Determine The Judgment In Copyright Infringement:Theory And Empirical Analysis

From the perspective of copyright trading, a copyright protection system is an alternative to market transactions. Since creators and duplicators can’t make an agreement automatically in the market. Then it needs external force to facilitate transactions. In other words, copyright protection regime is a system like market and is in order to promote copyright transactions. This paper uses the economic theory and the theory of law and economics to understand the economics logic of the copyright protection system, pointing out that on one hand copyright protection system achieve the incentive effects and deterrent effect, one the other hand copyright protection system is to promote copyright trade. Promoting copyrights trading can achieve social cooperation, thus contributing to improve the social welfare level. Therefore, punishment is a form of copyright protection system, promoting copyright trade is an inherent goal of copyright protection system.This paper also points out that the court is faced with the problem of asymmetric information in the copyright lawsuit. The court can’t grasp the fact of copyright infringement, so it only discerns the facts of the case through the plea of the plaintiff and defendant. Then the amount of the plaintiffs appeal is the main quantitative considerations of the court. Further, this paper finds that the factors which influence the actual court decision through empirical verification, so we can know that the plaintiff’s appeal is the main consideration of the court’s decision.Regression analysis shows that with the increase of the amount that the plaintiff wants to get, the decision ratio of the court has a certain degree of decline. But the impact factor is not as big as expected, indicating that the impact of the amount of the plaintiff appeals on the court decision is not so big. The explanation of this phenomenon is that the court acts the role as a conciliator between the plaintiff and the defendant in copyright litigation judgment. The ultimate goal of the court is to promote copyright trading. So the court does not care the actual loss of the plaintiff or the gain of the defendant, it makes his decision through the bargain between the plaintiff and the defendant. In this case, it is important for the Court to make balance between the interests of the parties. So the court wants to control the absolute benefit of the plaintiff. The decision ratio tends to decline as the plaintiff appeals rise. The absolute value of the coefficient did not reach the level this paper expected. It’s may be due to the smaller fluctuation range. Empirical results also find that the bargaining power of the plaintiff and the defendant can affect the decision of the court. This paper also examines the impact of the book itself on the court’s decision. Though it is mentioned that the court takes the book itself and other factors into consideration in the court verdict. But this article uses statistical methods to prove that the court pay more attention to the appeal of the plaintiff than the works themselves.In the current decision-making mechanism of the court, the court can facilitate transactions. However, the Court can’t make decision according to copyright infringement. It indicates that the specialization and scientific level of courts is relatively low, which affects the fairness and authority of the court, at last leading to court failure. And it will lead to insufficient deterrent against copyright infringement, so courts can’t effectively combat copyright infringement, ultimately. For society it will be hard to form a good mechanisms of book’s "creation-use" and copyright trading environment.For this, the paper advocates:Increase the awareness of emphasis on the fact of infringement of copyright; establish and improve administrative arbitration mediation mechanism to diversify copyright disputes solutions; learn from the common law system, and establish judgment archives of copyright litigation; actively deepen copyright court proceedings open system; construct a high-level team of judges; introduce the punitive damages system appropriately.