Research On The Copyright Identification And Infringement Liability Of Emoticon

With the continuous development of the Internetwork,language and culture are also constantly enriched,and emoticon culture is also constantly developing.The appearance of emoticons enriches the language of Internet users,and also brings high commercial value to the copyright owners.Many infringement cases have also been born,and the cases are analyzed.However,in practice,emoticons not only have been infringed,but also many emoticons have infringed other people’s rights,such as portrait rights,reputation rights,etc.,but the scope of discussion is too large.This article only discusses the case of emoticons being infringed by businesses,The conclusion of the copyright infringement case of emoticon is helpful to the judicial practice in China.This article takes the case of Xiamen Starmoly v.Chengdu Johnnie Company and other companies infringing on the copyright of their We Chat emoticons as an example to discuss the relevant issues involved in the commercial copyright infringement case of emoticons.This paper is divided into four parts:The first part combs the basic case of Xiamen Starmoly v.Chengdu Johnnie Company and other companies’ infringement of their We Chat emoticon copyright.The process of the case,finds out the focus of the case,and discusses the commercial infringement of emoticon and the responsibility of the infringer step by step.The second part discusses the legal nature of emoticon,focusing on analyzing the originality of emoticon,to judge whether emoticon is protected by copyright law.It introduces the connotation of copyright originality,the identification criteria and conditions of emoticon originality,and then discusses the identification of its originality by classification and the legal nature of emoticon.The third part focuses on the substantial similarity and discusses the infringement of emoticons.First,we analyze the general criteria for judging the substantial similarity of emoticons,from the subjects that are judged to be substantially similar to emoticons to the lowest threshold that constitutes substantial similarity,and then "extract filter contrast" is the test method to judge the general criteria for judging emoticons.The paper discusses the problems in the substantive similarity judgment of emoticon,and refines the substantive similarity judgment of emoticon,so as to provide an explanation for the dispute whether the case is infringed.The fourth part analyzes the responsibility of commercial infringement of the copyright of emoticon.This paper analyzes the subject of direct tort liability and the subject of indirect tort liability of emoticon,and discusses the tort liability of emoticon.The later part discusses the defense of tort liability,including fair use,statutory permission and expiration of the right period.