China And Japanese Comparative Study On Legal Protection Of Copyright, And The Enlightenment For China

Currently under the background of knowledge economy, the copyright industry is playing a more and more important role in the world economy. The health of cultural industry can indicate a country’s soft power while its copyright industry is a good index of cultural industry. Thus all countries, including developed ones and undeveloped ones, are committed to perfecting the law system of copyright in order to level up their own soft power and further to encourage the creation and communication of knowledge. China and Japan are neighboring countries, exchanges involving copyright are more and more frequent as the two countries’economic cooperation deepens. As the sole developed country in Asia, Japan has always insisted on the protection of copyright and is quite advanced in its building of system of copyright law. Since china’s entering of the WTO in2001, we have made great efforts to build and improve our copyright system. However, its sluggish progress cannot meet the present economic and cultural requirements of our country. China and Japan both belong to the countries of continental law system and share similar tradition in the aspect of law. This paper aims to research and compare the difference of copyright law systems between the two countries and put forward suggestions and proposals for our country’s modification and improvement of copyright system based on Japan’s experiences.There are mainly four parts.The first part is about the introduction of copyright. First, the common concept of copyright is generalized and the historical origin of copyright system is traced to get an idea of the background of its creation and development from the very beginning. Second, the building and development of copyright system in our country.i.e., our country’s realization of the importance of copyright system from its passive reform under feudal dynasties to active reform since the founding of PRC, is involved here. Finally, the present situation of Sino-Japanese copyright will be mentioned here, so will interactions and communications in the aspect of copyright between the two countries due to their geographical locations. The second part is the comparison of copyright law systems between the two countries, which is the key part. It compares and studies in detail the following six aspects between the two countries---structure of the copyright law system, the subject of copyright system, the object of copyright system, contents of right, limitations of rights and Tort liability system. China and Japan both adapt the continental law system. However, their economic, cultural and social environments are quite different, which results in their having specific law systems.The third part is the suggestions for perfecting the copyright law system put forward on the basis of comparison between the two countries. Our country walk comparably slowly in the development of copyright law system. There are also many defects and unreasonable stipulations in practice. Therefore, this paper offers some suggestions in terms of specification and perfection of copyright law system in civil, administrative and criminal aspects.The forth part is the summarization and conclusion. Through comparison between the two countries, the experience of Japan that worth our learning will be marked. In a conclusion, we need to, based on our country’s situation, absorb from the beneficial accomplishments made by Japan and speed up the modification and perfection of our country’s copyright law system to make our cultural industry more prosperous and developed.