Study On Protection Of The Film Character Merchandising Rights

Accompany with the fast economic development,companies are involved in increasingly fierce market competition.In order to earn more profits,they usually combine their products and services with famous Characters of films.However,the Personal Right Law is not perfect enough to regulate these behaviors which might infringe film producers' right of commercializing their Characters.An individual and targeted regulation or law is needed urgently to solve this problem.In chapter ?,this article analyzes the property of the Merchandising Rights from the angle of history and concludes that this right should be a kind of intangible property right which can be classified into Profit-Oriented Credit Right.Case analysis is conducted in this chapter.According to the cases of U.S.and Japan,the Merchandising Rights is composed of real person Merchandising Rights and virtual character Merchandising Rights.The Film Character Merchandising Rights is classified into virtual character Merchandising Rights.In chapter ?,this article points out the limitation of the law about The Film Character Merchandising Rights.Personal Right Law cannot solve the problem of benefit distribution.Copyright cannot protect the name of film Character.Trademark Act has many drawbacks in the matter of registration procedure and rights protection.Anti-Unfair Competition Law regards subject as operator,so that the protection of film Character 's right is insufficient.Two cases about the difficulty and problems in the matter of protecting film Character s are raised in this chapter.Chapter ?,?,? are the body of this article.The hypothesis is set from aspects of subject,object,content,limitation,protection and compensation.The subject of the right includes author,producer and actor.Whether the author has The Film Character Merchandising Rights or not depends on the time when the Character become famous.Producer and actor have the right permanently.The object is a kind of commercial influence which usually reflects in name,portrait and voice.The content includes the right to use and the right to forbid.The limitation includes the limitation of Public Order and Good Social Customs,the limitation of Freedom of Expression,the limitation of Right Exhaustion and the limitation of Term of Protection.In the end,this article proposes that the doctrine of presumption from Tort Liability Law can be conducted to protect the right of commercialize film Character.Besides,the oblige lost method and license royalty coefficient method are recommended as the methods to calculate compensation.