Copyright Relations Between Teaching Materials And Teaching Books And Antitrust Regulation

In recent years, the public houses represented by the Beijing Ren’ai Education Institute have sent a strong declaration of rights protection to teaching-aid book publishers, which made the long-lasting interest dispute between the textbook publishers and teaching-aid book publishers come out and aroused social attention.Among numerous cases of dispute, the textbook publishers always insist that the teaching-aid materials have infringed the copyright of textbooks in every way, and the relevant administrative departments also issued notification to protect the copyright of textbook. However, teaching-aid book publishers showed an absolutely opposite attitude. Although a large number of lawsuits have occurred, the copyright problem concerning textbooks and teaching-aid materials has not been solved effectively yet,let alone the disordered situation of competition in education product market.Meanwhile, both the court and the parties concerned have ignored an important question, that is, whether or not textbook publishers have abused the copyright and hampered competition by suppressing and pushing aside teaching-aid materials publishers, which has caused the monopoly. As far as I am concerned, this is not only a matter of the ownership of the copyright but also related to the sound development of our national education and normal operation of our market economy. Therefore, it is of great theoretical and realistic significance to resolve the questions above. Besides the introduction and conclusion, this paper expounds and demonstrates four parts during the process of analyzing and dealing with the above questions.The first part mainly analyzes the work property of textbooks and teaching-aid materials respectively from the perspective of originality. This paper argues that textbooks and teaching-aid materials both enjoy the independent copyright and should be protected by copyright law. But at the same time, as a public product, the copyright of textbooks should be limited while being used.The second part sets forth the relation of copyright between textbooks and teaching-aid materials. This paper argues that the structure of the teaching material can be arranged repeatedly, which belongs to the category of thought and will not be protected by copyright law. Thus, the use of the textbook structure does not lead to the copyright infringement. If the contents of teaching-aid materials are not similar to that of textbooks substantially, then it is difficult to judge whether the copyrightinfringement happens or not. What’s more, if the brand of textbooks used in teaching-aid materials is only for explanation and instruction, which would not confuse consumers, then it should be divided into reasonable use. As the derivative of textbooks, teaching-aid materials could not substitute for textbooks, which hence endows textbooks with a dominant market position.The third part deals with the monopoly caused by the abuse of copyright of textbooks. This paper declares that in virtue of the natural monopoly and favoritism of administrative laws and regulations, textbooks own a dominant market position. So the textbook publishers have hindered normal competition and breached the market order by many ways such as pushing out teaching-aid material publishers, etc. In this way, such behaviors of textbook publishers violate the anti-monopoly law and cannot escape the punishment of the law.The fourth part expounds the legislative limitation to copyright owners of textbooks. This paper puts forward the following main advices: on the one hand, the copyright law and anti-monopoly law should be combined, and by taking the anti-monopoly law as lead, relative legal systems should be established to regulate the abuse of intellectual property. On the other hand, administrative intervention of administrative departments on copyright law should be limited.Based on the combination of copyright law and anti-monopoly law, this paper deals with matters related to the attribution of copyright ownership and the prevention of the abuse of intellectual property right including the copyright as well as the improvement of usage of intellectual property right through legislation. I hope advices above can be referential and helpful.