Protection Of Online Game Rules On The Copyright Law

Recent years,China's online games industry has developed rapidly,and its output value has already ranked first in the entertainment industry.However,the protection of online games on the copyright law was not perfect,the legislative provisions fell behind the status quo of industrial development.As the core part of online games,the rules of the games were not given due attention and protection in legislation and judicial practice.The author hopes to explore how to perfect the protection on copyright law for online game rules through a comprehensive study of its nature,characteristics,judgment methods and standards,and to provide suggestions for the online games in the third revision of the copyright law.This article deeply studies the theoretical and judicial predicament of online game rules in terms of copyright law,makes a detailed affirmation to attributes of work and expressiveness of online game rules,analyzes the application of AFC test in online game rule infringement,and proposes the overall protection mode of game works.The main part of this article is divided into five chapters.The first chapter affirms the connotation of the online game rules,and analyzes the predicament of the protection of copyright laws to China's online game rules,and briefly sorts out the inadequacies of the protection to the online game rules in China's copyright law.The second chapter mainly expounds whether online game rules are works and what kind of works it should be recognized as.The author compares the online game rules with the definition of works in China's copyright law,and draws the conclusion that online games belong to the works stipulated in the copyright law.Besides,the author analyzes the three attributes of online games:procedural,audiovisual and interactive,and concludes that none of the nine types of works stipulated in the copyright law can cover the three characteristics.Therefore,the author suggests that online games can be specifically created in the copyright law as a new kind of rights object which covers the provisions of game rule infringement.The third chapter mainly expounds the expressiveness of online game rules.The author questions the mainstream view that the online game rules are regarded as thought,analyzes the expressiveness of the online game rules,and used abstraction test to abstract the online game rules,finding out the boundary between thought and expression in the game rules.The author concludes that the operational game rules belong to expression rather than thought.The fourth chapter mainly expounds the infringement identification methods of online game rules.The author thinks that the AFC test is applicable to the online game rule infringement identification.By abstracting,filtrating,and comparing,it is concluded whether there is a substantial similarity.In this chapter,the author discusses how the AFC Test to online game rules should be detailed,and concludes that the operational rules that belong to the protection scope of the copyright law should be abstracted from the game rules first,and then the limited expressions,necessary expressions and the expressions in the public domain should be filtrated out of the comparison range,and finally the extrinsic and intrinsic test are used to directly compare the game rules to reach a conclusion whether they are substantially similar.The fifth chapter mainly expounds the overall protection model of online game rules.By analyzing the advantages and disadvantages of split protection mode and the overall protection mode,the author concludes that the overall protection is more helpful to protect the online game rules,and makes suggestions about how to define the online game works and how to protect game rules under the overall protection mode in China's copyright law.