At 9:30 a.m. August 30, 2017, the seminar on Copyright Collective Management Licensing Mechnanism, co-hosted by British Embassy in Beijing, Renmin University of China Academy of Intellectual Property and the British-Chinese Trade Association, was held at the Cedar Hall of Sheraton Beijing Golden Corner Hotel.
Experts from Chinese and British court system, copyright-related departments, academia and copyright collective management organizations discussed in depth on the topic of how to set reasonable licensing fee in copyright collective management. The China Written Works Copyright Association, the China Music Copyright Association, the China Audio-visual Copyright Collective Management Association, the China Photographic Copyright Association, and the China Film Copyright Association, etc. sent their representatives to participate the seminar.
Professor Guo He, Associate Dean of Academy of IP RUC, first invited Mr. Tom Duke, Senior Intellectual Property Liaison Officer of the British Embassy, to introduce the British attendees and the background of the project.
After that, Professor Guo He introduced the Chinese participants and pointed out in his speech, “Now we all feel that collective management organizations is becoming more and more important in the information age, or in the era of knowledge economy. But objectively speaking, for an emerging country like China, the copyright system, as a system transplanted from the West, is not deeply rooted in China. Our confusion about collective management organizations also suggests that even those who are engaged in the intellectual property research may not have a comprehensive and correct understanding of such a system. So today, we have a thorough discussion on the intellectual property law of China, or the copyright system, and more specifically, on the mechanism to determine the license fee of the collective management organizations, which is of great benefit to the revision of the copyright law and even to the law enforcement in the next step. This is why we organize this seminar.”
The first part of the seminar was the section for keynote addresses, moderated by Professor Guo He. Judge Henry Carr, Chancellor of the High Court of England, and Fan Xue, Judge of Beijing Higher People’s Court, introduced the experience of how to calculate the reasonable licence fees in copyright litigation in the UK and China.
Henry Carr shared the UK's approach in dealing with disputes related to copyright licensing fees and explained a comprehensive overview of the UK's development and way of working in this regard through two cases. According to Judge Carr, the collective management of copyright in the United Kingdom, especially the system of determining reasonable licensing fees, was a result of long term development in the process of tackling with disputes. Although the UK and China may be different in their way of handling such issues, they still have many to exchange and learn from teach other.
Fan Xue shared the experience of dealing with relevant disputes in China, especially the experience in determining the amount of compensation for copyright infringement cases. In her opinion, the reason why different courts make different decision on the amount of compensation when they try to determine the right amount of statutory damage is that they may consider a number of different factors. And then she explained in detail all these factors and how they influence the judges’ decision. She said that judges in China committed to set a standardized criterion in seting damage and compensation, to solve the problem of making different decisions to the same kind of cases, so as to make sure that the result of the litigation is truly fair and to fully convince the litigants.
The second section of the seminar was moderated by Tom Duke, Senior Intellectual Property Liasion Officer of the British Embassy in Beijing. All participants had a heated discussion on the issues raised in the speeches of the two judges. Experts from both countries put forward different ideas, but discussed in a friendly way, aiming at the prosperity of the common interest, i.e. the copyright system.
At 1:00 p.m. in the afternoon, the whole seminar was successfully concluded in a warm atmosphere.
The Beijing Sunshine Intellectual Property and Law Development Foundation (SSIP) sponsored the seminar and Professor Yao Huanqing, Secretary General of SSIP, attended the seminar.
微信公众号：北京阳光知识产权基金会
Copyright: The Beijing Sunshine Intellectual Property and Legal Development Foundation