Study On The Method Of Judging The Substantive Similarity Of Fan Works

In recent years,"Fan Works" as a minority cultural phenomenon have gradually entered the vision of many scholars.But copyright law never has solved their problem,because they are wandering at the edge of the law.Their status in copyright is too vague that they have always been tortured "tort or not".Under this background,it's important to study the method of judging the substantial similarity of fan works,because the judge of substantial similarity is the essential condition of infringement judgment,so we have to study a method just belong to fan works.But in practice,it still exists some problems of judging the substantive similarity of the works,judges can't use it easily,because there's no specific standards can be measured,if apply this uncertainty theory to the fan works,the difficulty of judging the substantive similarity must increase,so this paper is dedicated to make the traditional method of judging the substantive similarity more detailed in order to it is applicable to fan works.Apart from the introduction and conclusion,the full text is divided into three parts:The first part introduces the basic theory of fan works,including the definition and origin of fan works,and summed up the fan works with the fuzziness of legal status,recreation and minority characteristics.From these characteristics we'll summarize the threat that fan works bring to the copyright of the original work,and the conflict of copyright between different fan works.The second part introduces the traditional method of judging the substantive similarity and their own defects,and then according to the characteristics of fan works,we'll summarize the limitations of traditional methods for judgment,mainly reflected in two aspects: the standard of originality is not clear and the boundaries between thought and expression are not clear.The third part is the focus of this text,according to the traditional method of judging the substantive similarity we'll study a method just suit for Fan works,that is analyze the creative elements of the original works on the copyright law,summarizes weather they are protected by copyright.Then,using the conclusion of the analysis to all kinds of fan works,and judge the substantial similarity between the original works and this kind of fan works in normal.