Research On The Copyright Protection Of Sports Event Programs

The spread of sports event programs is moving towards industrialization with the development of information transmission technology and the advancement of modern media technology,which makes the sports event programs become a new economic development factor under the “new normal” of China’s economy,and it has also brought a cultural feast to the masses.Producing a large-scale sports event is comparable to a huge investment,and it also accompanied by certain commercial risks.But sports event programs are not frequently held after all,it has natural scarcity as a kind of information resources,which bring a certain monopoly and bring rich economic returns to the right holders.The huge temptation of interest has led to frequent rebroadcasts of others sports event programs without any permission.Seeking legal remedies for pirating sports events,right holders often face two difficult problems.First,the legal nature of sports event programs is unclear,and second,it is unclear to choose a proper basis of infringement claim.At the same time,it also leads to the abnormal phenomena in judicial practice that different trial results unexpectedly happen in similar cases which deeply affect the unity of judicial trial.Regarding the legal nature of the sports event program,The definition of the legal attributes of sports event programs has the view that it belongs to the works,and further believes that it belongs to the works similar to filmmaking or if it cannot be classified as a specific type of rights,it can be considered as "other works" as stipulated in Article 3 of the Copyright Law."Video Products" believes that sports event programs belongs to video products.The difference between the two views is that there are differences in the identification of originality standards.Defining the legal nature of sports event programs is a prerequisite for determining the basis of claims.Therefore,the paper first analyzes the originality of the works.By combining the differences between the higher standard of originality of the authorship system and lower standard of originality of the copyright system,we can get the conclusion that China should not expect exorbitant standard on originality of sports event programs,and a minimum level of intelligent creation should be a proper standard.Then the paper analyzes the production process of sports event programs,and believes that the integration of many intelligent creative factors in the production process of sports event programs makes it have minimal originality,thus sports event programs can constitute work.On the basis of having the attributes of the works of the sports event programs,the paper then discusses the basis of infringement claims for the behavior of rebroadcast that without any permission.The unauthorized rebroadcast behaviors have the feature of "timed fixed-point" which does not meet the requirements of “Interactive” feature of Information Network Transmission Rright.The right to broadcast requires the initial mode of transmission to be wireless,and the term "cable" in "wired transmission or retransmission of a broadcast work does not include" network cable".In addition,the "bottom-line rights" stipulated in article 10 of the Copyright Law has great ambiguity,which is contrary to the legalism of intellectual property.Therefore,under the current Copyright Law,none of the above three rights should be regulated as a suitable claim.The law regulates social relations and basically keeps in line with social development.Content of the legal system can be easily affected by the change of social relations.The infringement of sports event programs rebroadcast behaviors has destroyed the stability of the original social relations,in the case that the existing legal system cannot be adjusted,it is necessary to construct a new legal system or to adjust and update the contents of the original legal system.Therefore,the last part of the paper tries to solve the controversy caused by sports event programs.In order to better protect sports event programs,the paper proposes to partially modify the Copyright law in two steps: First of all,it is proposed to redesign “audiovisual works” that is more comprehensive as a new type of the works,and incorporate sports event programs into it.Second,“right of communication to the public” is suggested to be created as a new claim.At the same time,we should continue to improve the supplementary legal protection of various types of intellectual property objects by the Anti-Unfair Competition Law.