On Legal Protection Of The Animation Characters

Animation industry is known as the "sunrise industry" in the 21 st century,which enjoys the advantages of low conversion cost,high added value,wide derivatives as well as favorable market prospects.Therefore,it has become the best future choice for countries to develop emerging industries.And animation characters,beyond all question,are the most commercially valuable part in the animation industry chain.More and more enterprises to arouse consumers to buy their products or services by taking advantage of animation characters’ appeal to the public.Through the re-development and re-utilization of the commercial field,animation characters have been endowed with both the appreciation value and economic value.At the same time,with the continuous development of economic market and extensive utilization of commercial field,infringement cases of animation characters continue to occur,which not only bring economic losses to the animation characters,but also greatly disturb the imperfect order of animation market.The research on the problem of protecting animation characters overseas is quite early and a set of legal protection mechanism both in theory and practice has been formed.The study of protecting animation characters in China is still at an exploration stage,and the academic circle still does not have a cleardefinition of animation characters,let alone legal relationship and the type of infringement.It usually the case that when an infringement occurs in animation characters,the holder cannot find a clear legal regulations to protect himself,or there is no uniform standard to follow.The unfair condition will surely lead to different judgments of that the same case.In this sense,the study on the protection of animation characters has become an urgent task to be solved in the theoretical cycle.This thesis,based on a real infringement,attempts to make an in-depth discussion of the concept of animation characters,analysis of the protection mode as well as the examples of infringement types so as to explore the problems existing in protecting animation characters in China.And then,after learning from foreign advanced theories and practical experience and combing with actual situation of China,it proposes the idea that the protection of animation characters in China should take a comprehensive mode mainly based on copyright law,and partially based on trademark and unfair competition law.And finally,suggestions are made to perfect the legal protection of animation characters.