Studying On The Protection Of Copyright Of Images Of Live Broadcast Of Sport Events

The national people high love for sports has made the sports industry purse its own commercial interests,and there will be brought about various infringement disputes by live broadcast of sport events.Due to the difference in the identification of originality standards,the court will also treat images of live broadcast of sport events as “woks” and “video recordings” in the judicial practice,so judge will protect the interests of the relevant parties by different legal basis for copyright and neighboring right,even when the attributes of the Anti-unfair Competition Law.By sorting out the court's judgment on the case of live broadcast of sport events,it is found that some questions,such as the vagueness of the protection of the right of the images,the inconsistency of the qualitative standards of images,and the confusion of the applicable legal provisions.In order to solve the problems in judicial practice,first of most,we should understand the quality of right and the source of right of images of live broadcast of sport events.Only when the organizers,producers,photographers and communicators of sport events are eligible litigants,it is necessary to carry out the next qualitative analysis.The ownership of the sport events' organizers as a source of right is due to the provisions of the Civil Law,rather than the creation of a copyright based on its charter;The producers of sport events should judge whether they have copyright or neighboring right based on the standards oforiginality;The photographers have copyright for their original work;The communicators of sport events have the right of broadcasting or the right of the broadcasting organization for the communication of images.In practice,sport events organizers,producers,photographers and communicators often have overlapping identities,making it difficult for judges to operate in maintaining the right of relevant right's holders.There is a clear difference between images of live broadcast of sport events and the sport events,the show of the live broadcast of sport events,and the signal of the live broadcast of sport events,we should clarify the characteristics of images of live broadcast of sport events and then discuss the question that the qualitative standards of the images.Because there is no concept of neighboring right in the countries of the Anglo-American legal system and the European Union and its member states,it has meaningless for China,but we can absorb the advantages of its Copyright Law,and combine the rigorous protection mode of the Civil Law system to qualitative analysis the China's the standards of originality of images of live broadcast of sport events.The layout of sport events' producers does not reflect the creative personality of images.Under the existing legal framework,it is more reasonable to identify images as a “video recordings”.At the time of the revision of the China's Copyright Law,if the originality standards are still not uniform,the copyright and neighboring right of the images of the live broadcast of sport events can be reconstructed,and the Anti-unfair Competition Law is no longer applicable.Besides,there will be anarrow range of problems that maintain the attributes of “works” and “video recordings”,and to protect “video recordings” by expanding the range of right of “video recordings”.Therefor,it is a good choice that transform “like movie works” and “video recordings” into “audio-visual works”,reduce the requirements of originality,and protect “audio-visual works” with “the right of commucicate to the public”..For the right of broadcasting organization,on the basis of determining that its object is a signal,the scope of the subject can be expanded to include the Internet platform.Though the above path protection to improve the “Copyright Law”,it has positive significance for the protection of images of live broadcast of sport events.