In their daily work and life, literary and artistic workers will also encounter many intellectual property problems. In order to help the majority of literary and art workers further enhance their awareness of intellectual property rights, the Social Service Office of the Shanghai Federation of Literary and Art Circles specially invited senior lawyers to write relevant articles - today's publication is the opinion of lawyer Wang Yaoxiang on the possible infringement of the "official account reprint".
Reprinted on the official account, be careful of infringement
Official account reprinting is a common way to share articles on official accounts. Different from directly forwarding the content of other people's Official Accounts, reprinting from Official Accounts is equivalent to copying and pasting articles from other Official Accounts to your own Official Account, and then publishing them externally with your own Official Account, and the reading volume of the articles is ultimately reflected in your own Official Account.
For articles with original statements, when reprinting articles with original statements, other Official Accounts need to open a whitelist for the Official Account that published the original article, and set corresponding permissions, such as whether the reprinted article can be modified, whether the source can not be displayed, etc.
With the continuous enhancement of people's awareness of intellectual property protection, the operators of Official Accounts are also paying more and more attention to the risk of infringement when writing official account articles, such as purchasing pictures from the gallery when accompanying pictures. However, when it comes to reprinting other people's articles, many official accounts ignore this point, and the operator takes it for granted that I reprint other people's articles by opening a whitelist, which means that I have obtained authorization for the content of the article, and there is no infringement problem. But is that really the case? Let's look at an example.
The WeChat public account hosted by a technology company released a group picture titled "19 Chinese Cities, 19 Moonlight Stories, Netizen: This is called Chinese Style" by opening a whitelist for reprinting. Mr. Liu asserted that the pictures in the article were his works, and that the technology company had infringed on the right of information network dissemination of his works without his permission, and demanded that the work be deleted and bear the liability for compensation.
The court of first instance ordered the technology company to compensate 8,000 yuan for economic losses and reasonable expenses, and the court of second instance upheld the original judgment.
An important point of contention in this case is whether the alleged conduct of the technology company constitutes an infringement of the right to disseminate information on the Internet.
The reason for the technology company's argument that it did not constitute infringement was that the article of the allegedly infringing art work was reprinted from an official account, and it had obtained the reprint authorization of the official account, and it did not know whether the art work involved in the case was authorized, and it had reason to believe that the author contained in the official account was the original creator, and at the same time, it believed that the reprinting of the article involved in the case should be applied to the reprinted party, and there were no corresponding rules that provided that an application should be made to Liu.
The court held that although the alleged art works of the technology company were reprinted from an official account, there was no evidence to prove that the official account had obtained Liu's permission or that the official account had the right to permit the technology company to disseminate the art works involved in the case that Liu enjoyed copyright through the information network. As the operator of the WeChat official account involved in the case, the technology company had a reasonable duty of care to review whether the art works involved in the case were legally authorized, and without Liu's permission, it published the art works involved in the case on the WeChat official account operated by it that had the same rights as Liu asserted in this case, which constituted an infringement of the right to disseminate information on the network of Liu's works.
Many articles published by the official account, which have complete copyrights, may only be text content, with pictures, videos and other material content, either downloaded from the Internet casually, or purchased from the gallery, even if they have the right to use, but they do not have the right to authorize others to use it. In the process of reprinting the official account, if all the brains are moved to its own official account, it is obviously an infringement of the right to disseminate information network of pictures, videos and other materials, and the corresponding right holder has the right to claim compensation.
A similar situation also appears in the portrait right, where the portrait of another person is used in the article of the first official account, and other official accounts also face the possibility of infringement if they do not obtain the consent of the portrait right holder when reprinting. For example, in the judgment of a dispute over online infringement liability between a cultural media company in Taiyuan City and Shi Moumou, the court also held that even if there is a whitelist authorization, it still constitutes an infringement of the right holder's portrait right.
Reprinting articles can certainly play a role in attracting traffic and increasing click-through rates, but the authorized whitelist is not a wall of infringement, and as the main operator of the official account, it is still necessary to carefully review the reprinted content. In particular, for the use of pictures, videos and other materials, it is especially necessary to fulfill the duty of care, and for the materials that are not sure whether the first official account has obtained authorization for others to use, it is recommended to choose to replace them to prevent infringement and burning.
Author | Wang Yaoxiang is a partner at Shanghai Junyue Law Firm
Part of the text and picture materials: the official account for the protection of literary and artistic rights and interests