Shenzhen Tencent Computer System Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Tencent) has 1 win and 2 losses in 3 copyright lawsuits with the China Central Propaganda Department’s Movie Satellite Channel Program Production Center (hereinafter referred to as the Central Propaganda Department Film Center).
On April 18, 2021, the Beijing Internet Court announced the judgments of the above three cases.
As the plaintiff, the Central Propaganda Department of China Film Center filed a lawsuit with the court for the rights of internet communication of the three films “Talking about Love”, “The Brilliant Season” and “Gao Fengshan”. (www.qq.com) provides online play services.
The Central Propaganda Department Film Center believes that this action has seriously violated the information network dissemination rights of the three films it owns and caused significant economic losses. For this reason, it requested the court to order Tencent to stop the infringement and give each of them 50,000 yuan. Financial compensation.
The Beijing Internet Court supported the Central Propaganda Department Film Center’s claim on the network dissemination rights of the two films “Talking about Love” and “The Brilliant Season”, and determined that Tencent was established for infringement, and each compensated 30,000 yuan for economic losses and 420 yuan for reasonable compensation. Expenses (that is, “notarization fees”), a total of 60.84 million yuan.
However, in the film “Gao Fengshan” litigation, the court held that the original copyright owner of the film “Gao Fengshan” Beijing Jinyi Qiankun Film and Television Culture Media Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as: Jinyi Qiankun Company) as early as September 24, 2014, will The information network dissemination right of the film was granted to a third party outside the case, and the authorization period began on the same day to the end of the copyright protection period.
However, on January 1, 2015, Jinyi Qiankun Company granted the exclusive network distribution rights of the movie “Gao Fengshan” to Lin Feng Hongda (Beijing) Technology Development Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Lin Feng Hongda). The authorization period is from November 2013. From the 25th to the end of the copyright protection period.
The overlap between the two authorization periods is a duplication of authorization. Therefore, Linfeng Hongda Company cannot obtain the corresponding rights. The Central Propaganda Department Film Center obtained the network dissemination rights and sublicense of the movie “Gao Fengshan” from Linfeng Hongda Company in 2015. The authorization period is from February 10, 2015 to December 31, 2063. Therefore, the Central Propaganda Department Film Center cannot claim corresponding rights in this regard.
The Central Propaganda Department Film Center is a public institution registered with the National Public Institution Registration Bureau of China, with a start-up fund of 169.82 million yuan. The unit was formerly known as the Film Satellite Channel Program Production Center of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, and was changed to its current name on November 2, 2018.
The Central Propaganda Department Film Center’s Annual Report on Institutional Legal Persons over the years shows that the unit has launched a number of rights protection actions for its own intellectual property rights in recent years.
Among them, in 2013, it completed the monitoring of 106 TV channels nationwide, carried out rights protection work to 14 websites, and obtained compensation for more than 430 films; in 2014, it completed TV monitoring of 112 terrestrial TV and movie channels of 17 local TV stations, and carried out litigation to defend the rights of infringing TV stations and video websites for infringing the rights of more than 420 films in the center.
From 2018 to 2020, the number of such cases in this unit has dropped significantly: among them, in 2018, there were more than 10 lawsuits for rights protection; 5 in 2019 and 6 in 2020.
Source: Economic Observer