Oppose the Abuse of IP on the Excuse of Protection

On the press conference held on April 25, Hu Wenhui, spokesman & office director of CNIPA, noted that concerned with the copyright dispute by the Visual China Group (VCG), it was stressed that it was the CNIPA’s consistently maintained principle to intensify the protection on IP and guard legal rights for the right holders by law as well as fight against the actions of abusing IP on the excuse of protection.

On April 10, the first black hole photo of human’s history was revealed by the NSF. Then, the photo was published on the official website of the VCG, which is known for its authentic commercial photos, moreover was tagged by the VCG. It was known that this photo was only requested to be used for news edition and publicity while it could not be used for commerce without permission. However the VCG was not officially authorized to acquire the legal rights for commercial purposes of this photo. Vice versa, it was suspected of taking this unauthorized photo for commerce.

After that, it was also found that the photos of national flags & emblems and indicators of companies were all listed chargeable on the VCG photo gallery.

On April 11, the VCG was requested for an appointment with the Tianjin cyberspace affairs authority, on which it was asked to stop its offense and irregularities and launch a thorough reform. After the appointment, there were two apologies published by the VCG, saying that it volunteered to close the website and launch the reform.

According to the announcement published by the VCG on April 18, the CFP Tianjin has already been investigated by the Tianjin cyberspace affairs authority on the accusation of dissemination of illegal and harmful information. During the operation of the website Visual China, the company didn’t fulfill its obligation on the security management and the scrutiny on the contents forbidden by the laws and administrative regulations. As a result, the CFP Tianjin was fined with an administrative penalty of 300,000 Yuan.

The VCG stated that it sincerely accepted the penalty and would comply with the related laws and regulations, taking its duty in the platform operation.

Hu also added that, it was noticed by the CNIPA that related functional departments had already asked the VCG to take corresponding reforms. It was also stressed by the CNIPA that it was the CNIPA’s consistently maintained principle to intensify the protection on IP and guard legal rights for the right holders by law as well as fight against the actions of abusing IP on the excuse of protection.

June 12, 2019

Source: China News Net

Photo from: 6199pic.com