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Intellectual Property and Commercial Court

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2015 Xing Zhi Shang Yi Zi No. 18

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Decision No. 2015 Xing Zhi Shang Yi Zi No. 18 
Date May 18, 2015
Decision Highlight

Article 2.1 of the Facebook Statement of Rights and Responsibilities (SRR) stipulates that “For contents that is covered by intellectual property right, like photos and videos (IP content), you specifically gave us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferrable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (IP License). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it”. Article 2.4 stipulates that “When you publish content or information using the ‘Public’ setting, it means that you are allowing everyone, including people beyond Facebook, to access and use that information, and to associate it with you (i.e., your name and profile picture)”. As for the definition of the term “content” and “information”, Article 17.3 of the Facebook SRR stipulates that “By ‘information’ we mean facts and other information about you, including actions taken by users and non-users who interact with Facebook”. Article 17.4 stipulates that “By ‘content’ we mean anything you or other users post, provide or share using Facebook Services”. As mentioned above, Article 2.1 of the Facebook SRR means that Facebook users agree to license the IP “content” which is posted, provided or shared on the Facebook to Facebook company. Article 2.4 of the Facebook SRR describes that when Facebook users publish content or information using the public setting, it means that the Facebook users are allowing everyone to access and use the user name, profile picture and other “information”. Therefore, when the Facebook users use public settings, they only allow third party to use their Facebook user name, profile picture and other “information”, not allowing them to use IP content such as photos and videos. The infringed work owned by the complainant of this case is under the definition of “content” under the Facebook SRR. According to Article 2.1 of the Facebook SRR, the Facebook users only license IP content to Facebook company rather than other third parties.The lower court did not look through this case and did misunderstand the meaning of Article 2.4 of the Facebook SRR. To be more specific, the lower court thought the Facebook users license any third party to use their IP content under Article 2.4. As a result, the lower court thought that the complainant had agreed to let the defendant reproduce the work. The lower court ruled that the defendant was not guilty, and this ruling is inappropriate. The Court considers the appeal from the prosecutor to be well-grounded, overruling the original decision.

Keywords

Facebook Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, License, Reproduction

Relevant statutes Article 91 Paragraph 1 of the Copyright Act
  • Release Date:2020-11-13
  • Update:2020-12-18
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