On The Protections Of Live Sporting Events In German Copyright Law

Because of the huge economic benefits behind the live broadcasting of sports events,a large of speculators illegally real-time rebroadcast live sporting events,which causing a lot of economic losses to the relevant rights holders.In recent years,most of the plaintiffs,who suffered from illegal real-time rebroadcasting of live sporting events,require copyright protection.Limited by the current copyright legislation in China,however,it is a difficult problem to regulate the illegal real-time rebroadcasting of live sporting events with copyright.Therefore,whether from the theoretical level,or the reality needs,should be timely to solve this problem,effectively protect the interests of the obligee and promote the development of sports industry.German and chinese copyright legislations are similar.For different live broadcasts of sports events,Germany provides copyright protection and neighboring rights protection.German criteria for distinguishing movies from non-movies are originality,and do not require movies to be permanently fixed on material carriers.In Germany,the difference between cinematographic works and “Laufbilder” lies in whether they are original or not,and German law does not require that the cinematographic works should be permanently fixed on the material vehicle.In terms of rights protection,it upholds the principle of technological neutrality and particularly gives copyright owners the right to broadcast and broadcasting organizations the right to control the real-time rebroadcasting behavior in Internet.The relevant subjects of live sporting events,which do not compose works,can only be protected according to the neighboring rights.There are two main problems in chinese copyright protections of real-time rebroadcasting of live sporting events: Firstly,there is no uniform standard for identifying the cinematographic works in China,which leads to different opinions when identifying the copyright nature of sports events and produces different judgment results in judicial practice.Secondly,Chinese copyright does not take into account the rapid development of broadcasting technology,and cannot regulate the implementation of real-time rebroadcasting through online streaming media,leading to the difficulty of obtaining corresponding protection regardless of whether the live sporting events constitutes a work or not.China should learn from the German practice,combine with the legislative practice of our country,reorganize the criteria for identifying film works,and protect some original live sports events.At the same time,guided by the principle of technology neutrality,we can expand the broadcasting rights of copyright owners and broadcasting organizations so that they can control all non-interactive communication behaviors,regardless of what kind of technical means they adopted.