The challenge of copyright enforcement in china's movie industry

Section II: Clarifying legal terms

Criminal IP opinions helped to clarify the threshold for criminal liability, easing the burden of proof for copyright owners and permitting to address better copyright infringements.¹¹⁹ These opinions elaborates a list of requirements which should be met such as illegal operations costing more than 50,000 RMB or illegal dissemination of third parties works reaching more than 50,000 clicks.

114 Dimitrov Martin, see above note 50, p.17.

115 Devonshire Chris, Intellectual Property Rights in China, China Briefing's publications, Springer, Second Edition, 2011, p.3.

116 Ibid., p.34.

117 Ibid., p.45.

118 Ibid.

119 IIPA, 2013 Special 301, see above note 27, p.40.

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These improvements helped a few Chinese districts to prosecute infringements more regularly.¹²⁰ Amelioration was still needed for all districts to follow it on a regular basis. For this reasons, further clarifications were made in 2015 concerning administrative penalties. It is now explained that «serious circumstances of illegal acts» concern dissemination of other people's work where actual clicks reached 25,000 times or where the dissemination was made in the form of membership while registered members reach at least 500 people.¹²¹ This statement improves the whole system by erasing vagueness of legal terms so that more and more judges will now be able to make consistent decisions. Also, Shanghai has issued ways of promoting the development of China's film industry such as «establishing coordinative mechanism for administrative law enforcement work».¹²² This fact shows that willingness of cracking down on film IPR infringement is not present only at the State level but also at the local level. Some IP training programs are offered to China's officials in order to educate them on copyright.¹²³ This increases their awareness that protecting copyright is essential for the sake of China's economy but also for the prosperous development of the national film industry, the whole process being highly dependent on improving administrative enforcement.

Section III: Improved regulations toward online infringements

Addressing online infringements was also improved. The Supreme People's Court (SPC) issued «2012 Networks Rules» which aim to strengthen copyright protection by providing better guidance for the courts in order to deal effectively with disseminated works in Internet era.¹²⁴ This decision was followed by the Draft Copyright Law amendment that addresses twenty-first century piracy by covering «reproductions in the online environment».¹²⁵ SIPO also pointed out the necessity of addressing infringements arising in a cyber environment.¹²⁶

120 IIPA, 2013 Special 301, see above note 27.

121 National Copyright Administration (NCA), comments sought for revising implementing measures for the copyright administrative penalties, 2015.

122 Section 7, Circular of the General Office of Shanghai Municipal People's Government on printing and distributing the implementing opinions for promoting the prosperous development of Film industry in Shanghai, 2011.

123 Priest Eric, see above note 26, p.830.

124 IIPA, 2013 Special 301, see above note 27, p.42.

125 Ibid., p.42.

126 SIPO, the Promotion Plan for the Implementation of the National IP Strategy, 2014, Section 3 Paragraph 27: «Strengthen the IP protection in cyber environment, carry out special crackdown major infringement and counterfeit goods sold on Internet.»

www.english.sipo.gov.cn/laws/developing/201405/t20140505_944778.html (visited on the 14/11/2015).

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