Study On Copyright Protection Of Video Game Rules

In recent years,the video game industry has developed rapidly,and the overall operating income has been growing rapidly,which has become an important part of the national cultural industry.Copyright is often involved in the infringement of video games.For example,electronic games are mainly composed of computer software,video,picture,music and other elements.Therefore,copyright law is of great importance to the video game industry.As the core of video games,the rules of video games have now become the object of plagiarism by some game companies,from copying the code of video games,art,music to copying the rules of games,which brings huge challenges to the video game industry.In judicial practice,Chinese courts generally believe that the rules of video games belong to the category of ideas,which are not protected by copyright law.There is a lack of expert testimony in the process of litigation.In theory,there are problems such as whether video games and game rules belong to works,what kind of works they belong to,how to distinguish the ideas and expressions of game rules,how to judge the substantial similarity of the rules of the game,how to protect according to the characteristics of the rules of the game and so on.As for the above problems,the first chapter clarifies the concept,characteristics and types of the rules of video games.The rules are binding,balanced and complex.The rules of video games are the rules that players must follow in the game,which are divided into operational rules,constituative rules and implicit rules.This paper analyzes the copyright attributes of the rules of video games,and holds that the rules of video games may constitute works in the sense of copyright law.In chapter two,it analyzes the current situation of copyright protection of video game rules in China.The rules of the game that form a written work include a instruction of the rules of the game,phrases and short sentences of the rules of the game,but the court generally believes that the instruction of the rules of the game can be protected by the copyright law,while phrases and short sentences cannot be protected because of the lack of originality.At first,Chinese courts recognized the rules of video games as the ideological category,and later regarded the detailed and specific rules of games as the expression in judicial practice.In judicial practice,it is quite common to protect the whole picture of video games as a kind of movie works,but this method also has the defects of narrow protection scope.The chapter three studies the criteria for judging the infringement of rules of electronic games.In terms of the distinction between idea and expression,classic cases at home and abroad can be used for reference.The operating rules of game rules belong to expression and should be protected.Special attention should be paid to the "rules" themselves and the "expression of rules".It is not advisable to regard all the rules of the game as ideas.“Abstract-filter-comparison” method and “internal/external test” method can be adopted to judge substantive similarity,and relevant cases at home and abroad can be used for reference for specific operations.The chapter four analyzes the theoretical,legislation and judicial confusion in protecting the rules of video games.In theory,there exists the problem of fuzziness in the idea /expression dichotomy.It is hard to use “Doctrines of Merger” and “Doctrines of Sce?nes a? Faire” in some video games.In terms of legislation,the provisions of Copyright Law are not clear,and the application of Anti-Unfair Competition Law by the court may easily lead to conflicts in the application of law.There are loopholes in the judicial “split protection mode”,and the expert testimony procedure is not used in the litigation on the issue of professional fact.The chapter five is about how to perfect the copyright protection of video game rules.Video games without plot and reality,such as sports competitions,have limited expression space for game rules and are generally not protected by copyright law.The practice of viewing video games as "movie-like" works is generally suitable for video games with long animation effects,but not for sandbox games with great freedom of players.In the process of litigation,professional issues should be timely expert testimony,the scope of expert testimony must be a matter of fact and expert testimony can not replace the judge's judgment.China's Copyright Law should introduce the concept of audio-visual works and redefine their originality standards.In terms of the object of copyright,legislation should adopt an open mode so that creative expression such as rules of video games can be clearly included in the scope of copyright protection.