The Legal Protection Of Character Merchandising Right

In recent years,China's animation industry has developed rapidly.Its audience has expanded from teenagers to all ages,and the commercial value embodied in characters has become increasingly obvious.In the academic field,the phenomenon that the second-dimensional animation character is commercially used in the three-dimensional real world,so that the consumer's love of the animation character extends to the real-life purchase demand is called “commercialization of the animation character”,and the interest represented by the phenomenon is called“character merchandising right”.A series of cultural consumption phenomena caused by characters have been integrated into daily life.This social phenomenon also caused a lot of disputes caused by the commercial use of characters.How to properly handle this kind of legal dispute in judicial practice is a difficult problem faced by the academic community.As an example,KUNGFUPANDA case puts reality confusion in character merchandising right—how to make use of existing law protect character merchandising right in situation that our country law doesn't protect character merchandising right directly.Based on the research results of domestic and foreign scholars on character merchandising right,the related concepts are defined.Next,the article explain why we can use copyright law,trademark law,and anti-unfair competition law to protect character merchandising right and how to claim the right.Then the article choose 24 judgments from 120 judgments.On analysis of typical cases,it found problems in the judicial practice and put forward appropriate suggestions.In the field of copyright law,it argues that the court should improve the determination of damages and should unify the identification standard of legal sourcesand how to define the behavior of the commercial use without permission of character;In the field of trademark law,it discusses how to protect character merchandising right through priority right and special protection given to well-known characters;In the field of anti-unfair competition law,it deemed that the court should optimize the protection path of false statement from the perspective of relevance misunderstanding and anti-unfair competition law should expand the scope of application.