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Intellectual Property and Commercial Court

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2014 Min Zhu Su Zi No. 67

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Decision No. 2014 Min Zhu Su Zi No. 67
Date May 6, 2015
Decision Highlight

The purpose of the Copyright Act is to protect the creativity of the author. The moral right aspect of copyright puts limits on unlawful adaptation and grants authors the right of paternity, so as to maintain the identity of the work and establish apparent association between the work and author. As for the property right aspect, it grants the author the right to reproduce, public broadcast, public transmit, adapt and distribute. Therefore the author has the right to use his or her work exclusively, and receive the economic reward. The purpose of Article 12 Paragraph 3 of the Copyright Act is to reconcile the difficulties of copyright belonging between the commissioning and commissioned parties. When not receiving the status as an author and its property right, the commissioning party is allowed to utilize the copyrighted work under the circumstances that the party has the demand to use the work, has paid the reward to the creator, and the work is in accordance with the party’s investment purpose. This is known as the “theory of purpose-transferring”. Therefore, to determine if the utilization of a work violates the Copyright Act, courts should examine if the utilization complies with the investment purpose of the commissioning party. If so, as long as the utilization does not infringe upon the identity of the work (such as changing the name of the creator), the utilization should be considered legal.

Keywords

Belonging of the Copyright, Commissioning Party, Commissioned Person, Theory of Purpose-Transferring

Relevant statutes Article 12 Paragraph 3 of the Copyright Act,
  • Release Date:2020-11-13
  • Update:2020-12-03
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