The Legal Protection Of Television Program Formats

With the development of market economy, commercial color of television program increasingly becomes strong and the audience rating is regarded as an importance standard to measure whether the television program is successful or not. However, increased competition in the television industry makes people begin to pay attention to TV program format. In order to enhance their competitiveness, the new television program format becomes a necessity for the competitors in the television industry.The increasingly prominent importance of TV show has made the cloning phenomenon program format became common, so the protection on television format is more imminent. There is no clear and unified definition for television program format both at home and abroad, furthermore, there is no clearly law to protect the TV show format at home. At present, the research on television format is still in the initial stage in our country. Dozens of program format cloning cases were resorted to legal proceedings, but there is no definite solution. So, it is very necessary to study the topic of the legal protection to TV show format.There are two basic ways to protect television programs format in foreign countries. One is through legal means. It mainly depends on all kinds of specific legislation to protect program format, such as Anti-unfair competition law, trademark law, patent law, contract law and so on. Western countries did not specify the copyright protection on TV show format, although it is a trend for legal protection of TV show format in the future. The other is through the non-legal means. It mainly establishes various folk non-legal organizations to coordinate and solve various programs format disputes. By introducing all kinds of foreign legislation and practice protection for television programs format and considering the basic national conditions, we can choose the suitable way to protect TV show format.Based on the analysis of the current situation of television programs format protection in our country, the defects of television programs format protection in our country, there are many obstacles through specific legal, such as anti-unfair competition law, trademark law, patent law and so on, protecting television programs format. Although the TV show format is not explicitly stated in the category of China's copyright law protection, the object of copyright protection is work. Based on the analysis and discussion on the composition conditions and judge rules of works, the TV program format satisfies the works and can be completely brought into the category of copyright protection. Finally, putting forward the copyright law as the main means to protect TV show format, absorbing foreign experience, using anti-unfair competition law, trademark law and patent law as supplements, and defining the cognizance of the program infringement, the mechanism of China's TV show format legal protection is constructed. On the basis of copyright law protection given priority and other laws as complements, by establishing various folk programs format dispute mediation organization and continuously enhancing the social public consciousness to show the protection, the TV format protection will be brought into a new stage.