Know rules of the game before testing copyright infringement by theme parks

With the state’s encouragement of the development of cultural industries, the game and animation industries have entered a stage of explosive growth, and among them, theme parks based on animation and game-based works have piqued the interest of numerous investors. However, due to defects in the grants of rights to animation/game-based theme parks, hidden problems of copyright infringement were created from the very start of construction.

Some examples: as reported by the media a certain park established a real-life interactive entertainment project based on the famous game Angry Birds, without having secured a licence from the game’s developers, Rovio Entertainment; a certain park erected and exhibited without authorisation a large sculpture strikingly similar to a Gundam character in Japanese animé, which ultimately was pulled down by the park itself after strong objections from the copyright holder; and an animation/game-based theme park established at a cost of RMB300 million (US$48 million) by a certain enterprise contained a number of buildings, sculptures, entertainment facilities, etc., the virtual originals of which can be found in the famous game World of Warcraft, all of which was done without the park securing the permission of the copyright holder.

Works protected by the PRC’s Copyright Law must simultaneously satisfy the substantive essential condition of “originality” and the formal essential condition of being a category of work falling within the scope specified by the Copyright Law (e.g. as specified in article 3 of the current Copyright Law).

Wang Yadong is the executive partner and Zhang Jing is a senior lawyer at Run Ming Law Firm