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The International Conference on Copyright Protection Trends, hosted by National Copyright Administration of China (NCAC), co-hosted by Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, sponsored by EU-China IPR2 cooperation project, US Chamber of Commerce, Quality Brand Protection Committee (QBPC) and the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) was held successfully in CSIPR from November 18 to 19, 2009.
Deputy Minster Yan Xiaohong from GAPP and NCAC, Director General Yu Cike, from Policy and Law Department of GAPP, Deputy Director General Wang Zhicheng from Copyright Administration Department of NCAC, President Wu Handong from Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, Dr. Michael, Minister Counselor from the Delegation of the European Commission to China, Jeremine Waterman, Senior Director of Greater China from U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Wang Xiaoping, Vice Chaireman of QBPC, Ms. Nancy Kremers, Senior IPR Attaché from US Embassy and representatives from NPC Legal Committee, Supreme People’s Procuratorate, SCLAO, Ministry of Public Security, MOFCOM, SARFT, Ministry of Culture, Beijing Courts, from more than 10 local level copyright administrative agencies and from universities and institutions; scholars and experts from home and abroad and representatives from QBPC member companies, around 120 in total, have been attracted to participate in this conference.
Yan Xiaohong, Deputy Ministry of GAPP/ NACA gave the keynote speech in the opening ceremony. “We hold the opinion that the developed countries and developing countries both face the mission and challenge of promoting Intellectual property development, creation application and the level of IP protection and administration. Encouraging creation and strengthening copyright protection are the common proposes and common tasks among worldwide, especially for the issue of copyright protection in Internet environment on the current time, which shall be deemed as a major common problem confronting the international community rather than North-South problem.” Yan said, “We are willing to share the successful experiences in the field of copyright legislation and enforcement and willing to consolidate communication and collaboration with other countries’ copyright administrative agencies, organizations of the copyright owners and scholars or experts in the field of copyright protection, Only taking an active part in international communication and collaboration, the road of China’s development will be wider and wider. We also hope the international copyright industries will live more colorful because of the participation of China.” Yan added and emphasized.
The session of Copyright Protection Trends in Publication Industry and Design Industry was moderated by Pro. Cao Xinming, Standing Deputy Minister of the Center for Studies of Intellectual Property Rights of Zhongnan University of Economics and Law.
At present, copyright infringement crime is becoming large-scaled and networked, plus the penetration of international piracy group is growing, so for public security agencies, their fight against this kind of crime has become more and more difficult and their task has been more and more tough. In odder to strengthen combating copyright infringement crime, Ministry of Public Security has decided to set up a supervision office to guide the work of combating the production and sale of fake and inferior goods and piracy goods under the leadership of Social Order Deparment. The preparation work for the office establishment has already been completed basically and this supervision office would set up its work by the end of November, introduced by Zhang Jun, Director of Social Order Department from MPS.
Mr. Raymond Moroney from Rouse & Co. International pointed out the legal issues on document inter-lending and document transmission which have a closely connection with publishing industry are very importation to China in digital time and he then introduced some experiences and methods concerning the solution of legal issues on document inter-lending.
Zhang Hongbo, Deputy Director General of China Literary Work Copyright Society deemed the effective method to restrain the literary work Internet copyright infringement is set up a general literary work licensing path with licensing first and law second, such as solve the problem of copyright licensing through collective administration.
Pro. Li Yufeng from Southwest University of Political Science and Law clarified the issue on domestic protection about the oversea works without governmental approval. Based on the judgments in some local courts by recent years, Pro. Liu has involved the basic thinking of the courts, that is, the plaintiff has the option to ask the defendant to cease the infringing act or to pay compensation for damages. On the condition that the work of the plaintiff has not get the governmental approval, the court only adjudicates that defendant shall bear the responsibility for the cessation of the infringement and the plaintiff can not get compensation or the compensation standard pulled down. In the view of Pro. Liu, this must be injustice.
Mr. Mark Cohen, Counsel to US Chamber of Commerce and AmCham IPR Forum Co-Chair suggested the applied arts protection should be strengthened in next round Copyright Law amendment.
The session of Copyright Protection Trends in Music Industry, is moderated by Pro. Li Mingde, Minister of IP Center of China Social Science Institute.
On the standpoint of legislators, He Ping, Director from the Education, Science, Culture and Health Department of State Council Legislative Affairs Office on the standpoint of legislators discussed the improvement of the copyright legal system.
Mr. Peter Schoenning Andersen, partner of Johan Schlüter LLP gave his opinion to this session from the view of the Europe. For harmonizing the relationship between the EU and its members for the copyright protection, EU has formulated many directives and regulations, but could not get a uniform copyright protection framework. For which, a new proposal was introduced by EU, that is to give more protection to artists and musicians, such as the protection terms extend from 50 years from the end of the calendar year of making to 70 even 90 years from the end of the calendar year of making.
Deputy Director General of Musical Copyright Society of China Mr. Liu Ping believe that the traditional copyright licensing model- must be authorized before use- is not suitable for the network environment and users’ habits, so we should expand the scope of the statutory license and authorize the copyright collective management organization to prosecute the infringement cases. We also should establish copyright compensation system and mandatory copyright collective management system and reduce the burden of proof of CCMO and increase the amount of compensation for such cases.
Deputy Director General of China Audio-Visual Copyright Society Mr. Lv Wenju shared his idea about this theme that it is a systemic and integrated project to make MTV copyright genuine which should be acted in concert with media hype, owners’ protect, Government's policy-oriented and the improvement of the relevant judiciary.
The session of Copyright Protection Trends in Film, TV and broadcasting industry is moderated by Vice Chair of QBPC Legal Committee Mr.Yun Xuan.
Manager of VDFS (Austrian Collecting Society for Audiovisual Rights) and Professor for Copyright Law at the University of Vienna Mr.Walter Dillenz mainly talked about the protection of the neighboring rights of broadcasting organizations and sporting events and a variety of performances. He said that although the broadcasting organizations enjoyed the neighboring rights, the protection of broadcasting organizations in "Rome Convention" is still insufficient. And he stressed that although there is a lack of uniformity in the protection of international rules to protect the variety show for sporting events, increasing the protection is an overall trend which asks countries should actively explore effective means of protection.
Country General Manager and Chief Representative for China Mr. William Feng introduced the global practice of rights protection of the Motion Picture Association of America, including content filtering, the length limit of the contents uploaded by users, automatic Deletion of the infringement content by websites, giving the removing rights to the right owners, user education measures, fingerprint recognition video filter techniques, etc., and emphasized that China should set up an effective mechanisms to combat " Secretly recording " behaviors.
Deputy General Manager of CCTV.com Ms. Wang Xiuyun also shared their experiences they met in rights protection and put forward three expectation: to increase the amount of compensation, to reduce the cost of rights protection, and to ask UGC to add filtering technology.
Professor of Law of East China University of Political Science and Law, Mr. Wang Qian addressed his speech in name of . Professor Wang introduced the law application of “red flag standard” on the basis of abundant Judicial cases and put forward new perspective of copyright protection of the film and broadcasting industry emphasizing that the trend of the future development of the law is to require ISP should take the copyright protection issues into consider when they design business models and apply technology.
The Session of Copyright Protection Trends in Software and Online Game Industries was moderated by Mr. Sun Hailong, Deputy Secretary General, IPR Trial Theory Sub-Committee, Trial Theory Study Committee, China Jurisprudence Association; Standing member of Trial Committee, Chongqing High Court
Wang Zhicheng, Deputy Director General from NCAC introduced the work process of software protection in new circumstance, and pointed out that the SCB will further improve the system of work registration and the system of rights record, aim to filter the searching information more efficiently, besides, it will also develop a set of copyright authorized state inquire system.
Sophie Song, Anti-Piracy Manager-China, BSA presented the software piracy problem and the challenges in Chinese software industries, he believe we should amend our copyright law or criminal law to solve the real difficulties encountered by the right holder when they assert their rights, to deter infringement by the power of enforcement and restriction.
Vice Chairman of QBPC Legal Committee & Director of IP Protection Department, Microsoft (China, WU Haitao mainly discussed the criminal protection to the software copyright, he pointed out although this protection has achieved some progress, it’s still difficult to affix the responsibility to the software pirates, and expect that there are some judicial interpretations to clarify undefined place in Criminal Law Clause 217 & 218 whereof the copyright crime is regulated.
Director of Legal Research Department of Tencent Mr. Si Xiao also made some suggestions on how to intensify the fight against the unauthorized severs and illegal Plug-in.
Prof Li Mingde from Law & Director of IPR Center, China Academy of Social Science also indicated the commercial secret system can be applied to protect the software frontier technique, and the copyright can be used to protect the source code, meanwhile he appeal for the deep discussion to whether or not we should apply the patent system and the anti-unfair competition law to strengthen the software product protection. Besides, Prof Li reminded some Chinese organization of the report that there is no sufficient evident to prove Chinese criminal protection level is too high, it doesn’t mean the present level is conform to the TRIPS regulation.
And he suggest rescanning to the nature of Chinese copyright administration enforcement
The session of Developing Trend of Copyright Protection on Law Enforcement was hosted by Zhao Xiuling Director, Enforcement Division, NCAC.
Chen Jinchuan, Chief Judge, IP Tribunal, Beijing People’s High Court gave an introduction of < a number of observations on Internet copyright dispute cases > they drafted. This discussion paper proposed targeted addressing solutions concerning the jurisdiction of copyright cases, elements of tort damages, network tort judgments, ISP exemption, legal nature of the “snapshot” and law application of “P to P” service .etc.
Mr. Peter Schoenning Anersen presented European Internet piracy enforcement experience, stating that in Europe, In addition to civil remedies, there is a more severe criminal law enforcement. Chief Representative of the International Intellectual Property Alliance,
Counsel of IIPA Mr. Eric H. Smith focuses on the experience of the American Intellectual Property Law Enforcement. He said according to American "Criminal Law" intellectual property crime will be divided into felonies and misdemeanors, but the overall threshold is very low, Punishment is very severe. In particular, he emphasized that "steal recorded" behavior constitutes a criminal offense in the United States directly, This is effective in combating piracy sources. Mr. Eric H. Smith suggested that the Chinese legislators should carefully set up such criminal threshold when talking about is a commercial act, not to set the threshold too high for it would be difficult to curb piracy behavior.
The Chief Secretary for Administration of National Copyright Administration Mr. Yu Cike made a closing statement.
He summed up the results of the meeting and pointed out that with the spirit of independence, China should borrow ideas from developed countries’ protection experiences to actively explore and improve the copyright protection and law enforcement system with Chinese features on the basis of fulfilling the international obligations. He also stressed that scientific and reasonable copyright legal system and efficient law enforcement system are indispensable which meet the realities of China.
Chinese Government, including the National Copyright Administration will remain our willing to listen to voices of all walks of life and adhere to open and transparent working methods. With the fully understanding of the international development trends and the conditions of industrial development of China, we will promote the relevant legal system improving constantly and build a fast and effective enforcement mechanisms.
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