The amended Copyright Law will become effective on June 1, 2021 in China

On November 11, 2020, China’s National People’s Congress approved amendments to the Copyright Law. The amendments will become effective on June 1, 2021. The amended Copyright Law improves the relevant provisions of copyright protection in cyberspace, especially greatly increasing the upper limit of legal compensation for infringement and clarifying the principle of punitive compensation, so as to further "support" creators to safeguard their legitimate rights and interests.

・Damages

The amended Copyright Law provides a series of punishment measures to greatly increase the cost of infringement. For intentional infringement, if the circumstances are serious, punitive damages ranging from one to five times the amount of compensation may be applied. If the actual loss of the right holder, the illegal income of the infringer, and the royalties are difficult to calculate, the court shall, based on the circumstances of the infringement, award compensation of not less than RMB 500 but not more than RMB 5 million.

・New concept of “audiovisual work”

The amended Copyright Law also makes adjustments to the definition of "work", and changes the expression of "cinematographic works and works created by virtue of an analogous method of film production" in the current law to "audiovisual works". This means that the scope of copyright protection will be further expanded, and new types of works such as network short videos will get strong legal protection.

・Fair use

The current Copyright Law provides that “free-of-charge live performance of a published work, without the permission from and payment of remuneration to the copyright owner, is permitted when neither fees are charged from the public nor the remuneration is paid to the performers, provided that the name of the author is mentioned.”

In order to prevent the purposes of making a profit in disguise by such means as collecting advertising fees through free performance, the amended Copyright Law replaces the aforesaid case of fair use with the following article 24.

・Technological protection measures

The amended Copyright Law also makes it clear that in order to protect copyright and copyright-related rights, the right holder may take technical measures.

Source:http://www.npc.gov.cn/npc/c30834/202011/c0e15181bfdf4eadb7065bee745 74953.shtml