On Legal Protection Of Fictional Characters In The Works

Whether fictional characters can be protected by copyright law? And how to protect them effectively? These problems have been discussed for a long time. Nowadays, since fictional characters really became a significant financial resource in business, more and more characters are adapted in literary works and business field in order to get benefits. These conductions caused many disputes between authors and users. However, the traditional copyright-centered legal protection system seems unable to deal with them. So, it is necessary to set up a new system. Based on analysis on concept of fictional characters, necessity of special legal protection, U.S.A legislation design, I carry on deep discussion about Chinese legislation design of fictional characters.This paper is divided into 4 parts.The first part talks about the necessity of special legal protection of fictional characters. I based the view on following three reasons: Fictional characters already became a significant financial resource in business. And the benefit imbalance resulted from the application of fictional characters need adjusting. Besides, the new measures can exert great influence on antifraud, so as to maintain normal market surroundings and safeguard consumers' rights.The second part illustrates flaws of existing copyright-centered legal protection system. Although characters can be protected by copyright law, trade market law and law against appropriate competition, merchandising right, which stems from commercially utilizing fictional characters, is quit different from copyright, trade market privileges. So, domestic civil legal system is limited in safeguarding this special right. On one hand, fictional characters are not deemed as object of copyright because of the uncertainty of their attribute. On the other hand, they are not trade market before registration.The third part aims at introducing and evaluating U.S.A legislation design of fictional characters. U.S.A set up a type of so called "cross- protection means" . In term of copyright law, there are several applicable standers to determine characters belong to object of copyright. Among these standers, the ones about literary characters are more restrict than those about cartoon...