On the afternoon of June 28, the author of the online article, Zu Zhan, posted an article, revealing that he received the court's winning judgment on the same day, "Regarding the case of me suing Jiu Yuexi's work "Little South Wind" for infringing the copyright of my "Embracing You Over Time", in the first instance result, the Beijing Chaoyang District Court found that "Little South Wind" and "Crossing" 'constitute substantial similarity', and thanked the court for its fair and just ruling. ”
According to Zu Zhan's public judgment, the court ordered Baihuazhou Literature and Art Publishing House to immediately stop publishing and distributing "Little South Wind", Jinjiang Literature City immediately stopped providing "Little South Wind" on the website, and the defendant compensated the plaintiff for economic losses of 100,000 yuan, compensated the plaintiff for reasonable expenses of 30,000 yuan, and the case acceptance fee of 4,300.96 yuan to be borne by the defendant within 10 days of the effective date of the judgment.
Soon, Jiu Yuexi posted through her personal social account, saying, "Very disappointed and angry! There are a large number of errors in the determination of facts and unfair and impartial rulings in the judgment, which I firmly disagree with and will resolutely appeal in accordance with the law! At the same time, Jiu Yuexi asked the court of first instance, Beijing Chaoyang Court, to make public the video of the trial on May 5, 2023, about the case, and submit it to the public for judgment.
Jiu Yuexi said that the court of first instance's summary of the character and circumstances was seriously inaccurate in many places, and the legal determination was even more erroneous, which was obviously inconsistent with objectivity. The so-called similar circumstances are all unilateral generalizations of the plaintiff's thinking, and they are full of errors. "According to the logic of the first-instance judgment, such a 'highly generalized' determination of the plot commonly used by the majority of creators in novels and literary creations, that is, the content at the ideological level, as the plaintiff's original creation, not only violates the basic principle of 'dichotomy between thought and expression' in copyright protection, but also puts future creators in danger and has no way to judge whether the work they have worked so hard to create may face infringement charges because of the description of universal human emotions!
However, netizens didn't seem to buy Jiu Yuexi's angry statement, and netizens left a message in his comment area, saying, "If you translate a little less of other people's works, you won't have lawsuits every day."
Jiu Yuexi's novel "Little South Wind" is the original novel of the TV series "Faint Fire" broadcast this year, published by Baihuazhou Literature and Art Publishing House in August 2017, with a Douban reading score of 6.5 points.
The controversy between Jiu Yuexi and Zu Zhan over whether "Little South Wind" plagiarized "Embracing You Across Time" began in 2016. "Embracing You Across Time" is a novel written by Zu Zhan in 2015 and published in October of the same year. In February 2016, some netizens sent a private message to Zu Zhan, saying that there were some similarities between "Little South Wind" and "Embracing You Across Time" that Jiu Yuexi began serializing on Jinjiang Literature Network in February 2016. In March, a "color palette" appeared in the Jinjiang forum, which contained the similar comparison between Jiu Yuexi's "Little South Wind" and the work "Embracing You Across Time", after the matter attracted attention, some netizens sorted out the similar plots of the two books and complained to the original violation center of Jinjiang, and on April 18, Jinjiang said that "the work "Little South Wind" does not constitute excessive borrowing or plagiarism, and the complaint was dismissed. Zu Zhan felt confused and depressed about defending his rights.
In 2021, Zu Zhan paid attention to the anti-plagiarism fund established by Zhuang Yu, which began when Zhuang Yu sued "How Much Do You Know About the Flowers in Your Dreams" for plagiarizing "Inside and Outside the Circle", and in July of the same year, Jiu Yuexi's "sue reader case" caused an uproar on the Internet, and the anti-plagiarism fund supported the incident to make Zu Zhan decide to defend his rights. At the beginning of December 2021, through the promotion of the anti-plagiarism fund, Zu Zhan first came into contact with the legal team, and on March 28, 2022, Zu Zhan publicly sued Jiu Yuexi on this matter.
Jiu Yuexi has been caught in the controversy of plagiarism many times, after a reader of Jiu Yuexi was sued by Jiu Yuexi for publicly questioning Jiu Yuexi's plagiarism and publishing a large number of "color palette" comparison pictures, in addition, Jiu Yuexi's work "Fireworks in My World" Meng Yanchen, who was out of the circle, was questioned about the character design of the male protagonist of "I'm Only Afraid I Love You", the novel "Dear Archimedes" was accused of melting the famous book "Sherlock", and the original novel of "Young You" was accused of melting the stalk Keigo Higashino's masterpieces "The Dedication of Suspect X" and " White Night Walking. Despite the controversy, Jiu Yuexi's works seem to have always been loved by film and television adaptation investors, such as "Young You, So Beautiful" adapted into the movie "Young You", "A City, Waiting for You" adapted into "Fireworks in My World", "You Are More Beautiful Than Beijing" adapted as "You Are More Beautiful than Starlight", and "Little South Wind" adapted as "Faint Fire".
According to public information, the definition of "Rong Stem" is the act of bringing together the creativity of all parties in the process of online literature creation, and borrowing the intellectual achievements of others in the character setting and story routines of the work, and for this kind of creative reference, the "Jinjiang Literature City Original Writing Specification" shows that independent creativity is not protected, and what is protected is the specific text that expresses the idea, or the order, logic and causal relationship that links many ideas. For example, the idea of "crossing after a crash" can be used by anyone, but the text that describes the story cannot be the same as anyone else's.
Different from the traditional copying and handling plagiarism, the two works are different from the text expression alone, but some readers will have a strong sense of déjà vu in reading, and the plot feels very similar, so some people regard this kind of merging stalk as "high-level plagiarism", or "manuscript washing" and "Chinese translation", and it becomes difficult to define whether it is reasonable reference or plagiarism. As far as Zu Zhan's case is concerned, lawyer Zhao Hu also said that "this case is not easy".
However, this kind of fusion case is not without precedent, in 2015, the top ten intellectual property cases of Chinese courts, Qiong Yao v. "Gong Suo Liancheng" plagiarized his own work "Plum Blossom Branding" case is typical, in 2014, when "Gong Suo Liancheng" was broadcast, netizens pointed out that the plot is very similar to "Plum Blossom Branding", Qiong Yao publicly sent a letter to the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television to request an investigation into the matter, and the final trial determined that "Palace Lock Liancheng" infringed "Plum Blossom Branding". The court of first instance held that in the literary works used for comparison, the relationship between the characters and the storylines based on the specific characters are highly similar, and the copyright infringement can be established. At that time, the SPC stated that the significance of this case lies in the fact that the judgment fully explains the methods and criteria for judging "substantial similarity" of literary works, and has guiding significance for distinguishing between "thought" and "expression" in the plot selection, structural arrangement, and plot advancement design of literary works.
Source: Yangtze Evening News
编辑：Sharon