중국에서 온라인 게임의 법적 보호 - 중국 저작권법을 통한 보호를 중심으로 -

Abstract

In the past three or four years, in the news about the Chinese cultural content industry reported by the Korean media, the three most frequently occurring core words are “Korean restriction”, “plagiarism” and “game version number”. As we all know, the Korean government introduced the THAAD in 2017. So far, the cultural content of TV dramas, movies and games, which are the main export products of Korea, still cannot enter the Chinese market smoothly. I personally think that this situation is likely to continue for quite some time in the future. Under this circumstance, if the cultural content of Korea is difficult to export to China, first of all, we have to properly protect the Korean culture content that has entered the Chinese market, which is the best choice. At present, TV program format are hard to get the protection of copyright law as the basic law of cultural industry, but there is no problem in China that online games are protected by law. In China, there are many laws protecting online games. The most important laws are the Chinese Copyright Law and the Anti-Unfair Competition Law. First of all, the online game itself belongs to computer software, so it can be protected by copyright law. Individual elements that constitute online games, such as music, art, articles, and audiovisual works, can also be protected by copyright laws. However, there are different opinions on whether the dynamic continuous pictures of online games can be protected by copyright law. However, most theories and jurisprudence recognize the possibility that game pictures with characters, backgrounds and story plots are protected by copyright law as movie-like works. In China's online game infringement cases, rights holders mainly file suits in two ways. First, the individual elements of the game are protected as works of art, literary works, musical works, computer software works and audiovisual works. This is the most common type of lawsuit. Second, as mentioned above, the continuous dynamic picture of the game is protected as an audiovisual work (a movie-like work). However, among the many elements that make up the game, elements that belong to the ideological field and do not have expressions, elements that are not original, and elements that belong to the public domain field are still not protected by copyright law. Among the constituent elements of online games, the objects that are generally not protected by copyright law are game playing method and game regulation, the name of game interface and online game, and the names of individual components. However, although these elements are hardly protected by copyright law, they can be protected by anti-unfair competition laws. As we can see, the components of online games that cannot be protected by copyright law in China are still protected by anti-unfair competition laws, and more and more cases of Chinese courts have recently supported litigation bans. So we need to protect our game works in a more positive way in China. Of course, in order to deal with infringement, copyright registration of online games is necessary. In short, in China, our online games can be well protected by law and litigation. Although copyright infringement litigation takes a long time, and even if it wins, sometimes it can not get enough compensation. Nevertheless, we abandon the right to protect. Otherwise, the incidents of infringing our online games in China are more frequentIy, and the world's largest game market, the competitiveness of Korean online games is also gradually declining, and the result will eventually lose the Chinese market. Anyway, the law does not protect those who sleep on their rights.