Case No 13: Sun Lijuan sues Urban Revivo (Guangzhou) and Guangzhou Urban Renewal for copyright infringement

1. Background

Sun Lijuan published a piece of art work showing a giraffe on a website on January 12, 2011. Sun's work then won first prize at a T-shirt design competition in March, 2011. Sun believed that the two Guangzhou companies used her work in their products and thus infringed on her signature, reproduction and publishing rights. She applied to court for an order that the two defendants stop the infringement, pay compensation of 270,000 yuan, and make written apologies to affect public awareness.

2. Ruling

In the first trial, the Guangzhou Baiyun district people's court held that the two defendants used Sun's work without authorization and thus infringed on her copyright. But, they couldn't be held accountable for violating Sun's signature right since it was hard to legibly print the name of a work’s author on clothes. The court ruled the two defendants should stop the violation, destroy related products in stock or on sales, and pay Sun 30,000 yuan for her loss. Sun didn't accept the ruling and took the matter to a higher court. The Guangzhou Intellectual Property Court believed that showing the name of authors of art works used on clothes was common practice in the fashion design industry, and therefore the two defendants violated Sun's signature right. Considering the fame of the art works, Guangzhou Urban Renewal's obvious attention, and Urban Revivo (Guangzhou)'s significant business operations, the intellectual property court held that the compensation was too low in the first ruling and ordered the two defendants to compensate Sun with 80,000 yuan and offer her an apology.

3. Significance

The case involved identification of signature right infringement in costume design. The court considered industry practice in costume design and, and decided that there were no objective restrictions in naming the authors when using their art works on clothes. In addition, name labeling wouldn’t compromise the overall aesthetics of clothing. The final ruling protects an author's signature right and plays an important role in standardizing copyright use in the costume design industry.

Case No 14: Blizzard Entertainment and Shanghai EaseNet Network Technology apply for interim injunction

1. Background

Blizzard Entertainment was the copyright owner of the game World of Warcraft, and Shanghai EaseNet Network Technology was the exclusive operator of the game in the Chinese mainland. The two parties believed that the game Quanmin Warcraft, which was developed by Chengdu Qiyou Co and run exclusively by Rekoo and downloadable from http://game.open.uc.cn/, infringed on their copyright and was an unfair competition practice in that it used their name and decorations as well as generated misleading promotions. The two plaintiffs applied for an interim injunction when filing the litigation. They appealed to the court to have the three defendants immediately stop the infringement and offered 10 million yuan as a cash guarantee.

2. Ruling

The Guangzhou Intellectual Property Court granted the injunction, ruling that Chengdu Qiyou and Rekoo be forbidden to copy, distribute and promote the game in question, and http://game.open.uc.cn/ stop distributing the game. None of the three parties have appealed.

3. Significance

The case involved an interlocutory injunction for an immediate stop of an activity. It’s important to actively deal with such applications and effectively enforce judgments to preserve intellectual property and ensure timely, convenient and effective judicial remedies. In such an application, the court must balance benefits to applicant and respondent, and set conditions for a standardize review process. They should not only satisfy the justified demand of the applicant to have their rights immediately protected but also prevent abuse of the system to impair business rivals. In this case, the court listened to the opinions of both parties, considered the applicants’ security guarantee, properly determined the precise measures necessary to make the injunction effective, and balanced the benefits to both sides.