Second Draft of The Copyright Law Amendment under Review at Standing Committee of the NPC

September 11, 2020

On August 8, the "Amendment to the Copyright Law of P.R. China (Draft)" was submitted to the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress for the second review.

The second review of the draft further improved the definition and types of works, revising them to "the works referred to in this law are the intellectual achievements that are original and can be expressed in a certain form in the fields of literature, art and science."

In terms of improving the protection of audio-visual works, the second-review draft of the draft distinguishes the copyright ownership of audio-visual works on the basis of the first review. For example, the second review of the draft adds provisions on the basis of "movie works or TV drama works". If other audio-visual works "constitute cooperative works or service works, the copyright ownership shall be determined in accordance with the relevant provisions of this law; they do not constitute cooperative works or service works. The ownership of the copyright is agreed between the producer and the author. If there is no agreement or the agreement is not clear, the producer enjoys it, but the author has the right to sign and receive remuneration. If the producer’s use of the audio-visual works specified in this paragraph exceeds the scope of the contract or industry practices, the author's permission should be obtained."

In addition, in response to the problem of copyright abuse, the second-review draft focused on the compliance with the Civil Code, Anti-Trust Law and other laws, and deleted the expression "not to abuse rights to affect the normal dissemination of the work" in the first-review draft and the provisions concerning the related legal responsibilities. Meanwhile, in order to better balance the protection of copyright and public interest, the second-review draft intends to appropriately expand the scope of the legal use of related works without the permission of the copyright owner and without payment to him or her. (Source: wwww.cnipa.gov.cn)

 

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