Study On Copyright Law Protection Of Fictional Characters

Fictional characters, usually refers to the artistic image which appear in film,television, cartoon and literary works. In recent years, people pay more attention tofictional characters with the vigorous development of culture industry. It willseriously violate the interest of character creators that making use of fictionalcharacters to create works again or taking advantage of the appeal of fictionalcharacters to promote the sale of merchandise and service without the permissionfrom creators. The need of judicial practice highlights the necessity of copyright lawon the protection of fictional characters. The fictional characters infringement disputesare increasing. The serious imbalance interests of character creators, character usersand the social public need copyright law to provide comprehensive protection. Thecharacter creation behavior also needs the encouragement and support of copyrightlaw. However, due to the blankness of the existing law and the lack of theoreticalsupport, judge often feel helpless when dealing with this kind of problems.Fictional characters are composed of different elements. They can be dividedinto literary characters, cartoon characters and audio-visual characters according todifferent types. Copyright law can protect fictional characters from these two aspectstoo. Due to different characteristics of the roles, tort differ in thousands ways, withdifferent degree of originality, copyright law in protecting fictional characters havesome deficiencies and limitations. These problems become copyright law defect inprotecting fictional characters and remain to be perfected, which include whetherfictional character name can be protected by copyright law, how to calculate characterimage infringement compensation, the determination of literary charactersinfringement lack of uniform standards, the use of cartoon characters should beclassified as which rights area and so on.According to the limitations of copyright law in protecting fictional characters,this paper will put forward corresponding countermeasures and suggestions from thefollowing two aspects. On the one hand, for the limitations of copyright law on theprotection of character elements, we can solve the problem of object protectionthrough the general understanding of the works concept. At the same time, we can provide more effective protection for character creators through setting clearinfringement standard, dealing with the calculation of damages scientifically andformulating reasonable rights period. On the other hand, for the limitations ofcopyright law on the protection of different types of fictional characters, a set ofcriteria can be established to deal with literary role infringement. We should followthe clear describe and predictable two basic principles to determine the integrity ofcartoon characters. We also regard cartoon characters utilization behavior as aviolation of the right of reproduction. And audio-visual role is to be established clearprotection rules.By using comparative analysis, normative analysis, cases analysis and othermethods, this paper wants to further clarify the general theory of copyright law onthe protection of fictional characters, to make up for the deficiencies of copyright lawprovisions and to give full play to the advantage of copyright law protection. Thishelps to let the character creators’ legitimate rights and interests get comprehensiveprotection. It’s good for the creation behavior of literature field and market orderregulating and the role value maximization achieving. It also can make the judge inthe trial of cases can accurately find legal basis.