April 20-26, 2020, is the National Intellectual Property Publicity Week. On the morning of April 21, the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region High People's Court held a press conference on judicial protection of intellectual property rights in Guangxi courts and broadcast it live to the public through the Sina Justice Channel. The meeting mainly released the following content: 1. White Paper on the Status of Judicial Protection of Intellectual Property Rights in Guangxi Courts (2019); 2. Announced the top ten intellectual property trials in Guangxi courts in 2019; 3. Answered questions from media reporters on the spot.

      The Tongwang Intellectual Property team watched the live broadcast of the press conference on time in the conference room.

  The Guangxi High Court comprehensively analyzed the intellectual property cases in the district from the aspects of representativeness, typicality, difficulty and novelty, and finally selected the "Top Ten Intellectual Property Trials in Guangxi Courts in 2019". Among them, the "Copyright Infringement Dispute Case of Guangxi Nandan Mo Laoye Winery Co., Ltd. v. Guangxi Dongcang Yuanjiang Gongjiu Winery Co., Ltd." represented by Zhang Xiangyu, the head of the Tongwang Intellectual Property team, was selected as one of the top ten intellectual property trials in Guangxi courts in 2019. , which is an affirmation of the professionalism of the Tongwang Intellectual Property Law Team.

  Prior to this, the cases represented by Zhang Xiangyu were also selected as one of the top ten intellectual property trials in Guangxi courts in 2014 and 2017.

    Brief introduction of the case of "Copyright Infringement Dispute Case of Guangxi Nandan Mo Laoye Winery Co., Ltd. v. Guangxi Dongcang Yuanjiang Gongjiu Winery Co., Ltd.":

      Mo Laoye Company is the copyright owner of the "Mofu Gongjiu" calligraphy work involved in the case. Mo Laoye Company believes that the "Mofu Gongjiu" characters used by Dongcang Company on the wine bottles it produces, as well as on the door of its store, promotional posters, and plaques on the display cabinet walls in the store are the same as its works, so it sued Dongcang Company to the court for infringing the copyright of the work. Dongcang Company argued that the works it used were completely different from Mo Laoye Company's calligraphy works, and that the copyright registration obtained for the works should be protected by law.

  The court held that, by comparing Mo Laoye Company's "Mofu Gongjiu" art work with the allegedly infringing work, the two are substantially similar. Although Dongcang Company's work has been registered, its registration and creation time are later than that of Mo Laoye Company, so it was ruled that Dongcang Company's use of "Mofu Gongjiu" constituted copyright infringement and should bear the responsibility of stopping the infringement and compensating for losses.

【 Reasons for selection 】

  Chinese law stipulates that copyright arises from the date of completion of the creation of the work and does not require registration with the administrative department as a requirement. Copyright registration adopts the principle of "voluntary registration, formal examination". If there is a conflict of rights, the people's court shall make a determination of whether there is infringement after substantive examination, and shall not only use the copyright registration certificate as a basis for judgment. In this case, both the right work and the infringing work have obtained copyright registration. The court comprehensively examines the originality, creation time, registration time, and actual use of the work, and gives priority to the protection of the work that was registered first and created and used first. By giving full play to the leading role of judicial protection of intellectual property rights and protecting the legitimate rights and interests of prior copyright owners in accordance with the law, it helps to guide right holders to enhance their awareness of copyright protection and pay attention to retaining the original manuscript of the work and records of the creation process, so as to better protect their legitimate rights and interests.