Recently, Tianjin No. 2 Intermediate Court concluded a criminal case of infringement of foreign copyright. This is the first time the Court has trialed a criminal case of foreign copyright infringement.

From February 2017 to December 2018, in order to produce and sell pirated CDs that infringed on foreign copyrights, Chen XX recruited multiple personnel cooperated, purchased CDs of original film and television works for the production of master disks, and entrusted a CD production company to do so. After production, the finished pirated CDs are packaged and sold to others by way of online ordering. The personnel who bought the CDs then sold pirated CDs abroad for profit through the website. After the incident, more than 500,000 pirated CDs were seized.

During the trial of the case, the Court appointed legal aid lawyers for the three defendants who did not entrust a defender. After soliciting all the parties and defenders’ opinions, the trial was conducted by stages and in batches. It went through three trials, which fully protected the parties’ litigation rights. The Court judged in accordance with the law that the CD-ROM production company committed a crime as a unit and was fined 4.5 million yuan. More than ten natural person defendants in the whole case were sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment ranging from one year and six months to five years, including one defendant was applied probation in accordance with the law.