Research On The Identification Of Computer Software Copyright Infringement

Since the advent of computer hardware in the 1970 s,the computer industry has developed continuously.As the soul of computer,the software industry has become the most important part of the field of social production and culture.Computer programs are integrated into all parts of people’s life,and the huge benefits behind them promote the emergence of a large number of violations.As a type of legal copyright works in China,computer software has been included in the protection of the copyright legal system when China promulgated the copyright law.A mature,stable and practical software development often carries the consumption of a large number of human and material resources.The act of infringing on the interests of software copyright owners seriously damages the interests of software developers and poses a great obstacle to the development and innovation of China’s software industry.Software infringement should be punished by law,but due to the complexity of the internal components of computer software,it is difficult to judge the infringing works in judicial practice.Therefore,the identification of computer software copyright infringement has become a research hotspot.From the perspective of the general theory of copyright,the object of computer software protected by copyright should first comply with the constraints of "dichotomy of thought expression".Many elements of computer software,such as function,interface,program structure,algorithm and data structure,should be divided into thought or expression,so as to establish a comparative scope for the determination of software copyright infringement.From the perspective of legal and economic theory,while software developers pay a lot of mental activities,they also spend a lot of economic resources to complete the creation of software works.From the perspective of the current situation of protection in China,the provisions on the determination of Software Infringement in China’s existing legislative system can not meet the full protection of software works: the copyright law and software regulations do not make a clear division of the scope of software copyright protection,and other auxiliary laws can not give due enrichment to the relevant systems.The defects of legal basis directly lead to the inability to form a unified judgment standard for the judgment of tort in judicial practice,and the judgment results have high uncertainty and subjectivity.Reviewing the theoretical research and judicial practice explored by some foreign countries for many years,there are some reasonable ways to judge software copyright infringement,and summarizes the criteria for judging similar infringing works by using "substantial similarity and contact".The reasonable system of extraterritorial legislation and judicature can provide useful help for perfecting the judgment standard of computer software copyright.In the future,China should improve the judgment system of computer software copyright infringement from multiple angles: first,we should refine the copyrightability of internal components of computer software from legislation;Secondly,we should adopt reasonable standards to judge similar infringing works;Finally,continuously improve the relevant systems such as computer software registration,and establish an all-round and multi-level copyright protection model for computer software.