Copyright Law Protection Of Video Game Rules

The purpose of this paper is to clarify the concept of video game rules,sort out the existing judicial practice on the protection path of video game rules and make an analysis,through the analysis of "thought" and "expression" in the "dichotomy of thought and expression",the specific rules of video games into the category of "expression",and for the "originality" in the composition elements of works,"expression in a certain form".The boundary between"thought" and "expression" in the "dichotomy of thought and expression",the specific rules of video games are included in the category of "expression",and the "originality","expression in a certain form" and "literature,art" in the composition elements of works are included."and the three elements of"literature,art and science" in the composition of the work,the rules of electronic games can be protected by copyright law.This paper draws on the methods for determining the infringement of video game rules in domestic and foreign judgments,and grasps the criteria for determining the substantial similarity of video game rules as a whole,such as the abstraction-filter-comparison test method,the internal and external analysis method,and the overall sensory method.This paper will discuss the copyrightability of online game rules and the way of copyright protection,etc.,hoping to provide certain ideas for the copyright protection of electronic game rules in China.Meanwhile,this paper will summarize and comment on the protection methods of video game rules in domestic judicial decisions by combining domestic and foreign judicial practices,and propose that video game rules can be included in the protection scope of copyright law,in the hope of raising the public awareness of copyright law protection of video game rules by including them in the protection.This paper is mainly divided into four parts: the first part,clarifies the concept of electronic game rules,and distinguishes the electronic game rules from its related concepts,such as traditional game rules and the expression of electronic game rules.In the second part,the author analyzes the attitude of China’s current judicial practice towards the rules of electronic games and the way of adjudication by searching the judicial decisions related to the rules of electronic games on the website of Beida Fabao and China Judicial Documents,and summarizes and analyzes that the current judicial decisions mainly adopt two modes of protection,namely the protection of anti-unfair competition law and the protection of copyright law,and the paper will specifically analyze various existing ways of protecting the rules of electronic games and propose the existing judicial practice.In this paper,we will analyze the paths of various existing ways to protect the rules of electronic games and propose the dilemma of the existing modes of protecting the rules of electronic games in judicial practice.The third part,focusing on the copyrightability of video game rules,is mainly discussed in this chapter from two aspects of"dichotomy of thought and expression" and "elements of works".Firstly,I focus on whether the rules of video games can constitute expression,and this part starts from the "dichotomy of thought and expression",and adopts the form of pyramid to filter out the unprotected parts of the rules of video games that belong to "thought" and exclude the "limited expression" of the rules of video games.The rules of video games belong to "limited expression","necessary scene" and "public domain expression".Then,whether the rules of the video game constitute a "work",the rules of the video game to a certain extent are analyzed again,and the rules of the video game meet the requirements of "originality","expression in a certain form" and "literature,art"."and "in the field of literature,art and science" and other elements of works,can be included in the scope of protection of copyright law.As well as the analysis of video game rules can be protected by copyright according to the type of works in the current Copyright Law.In the fourth part,regarding the criteria for determining the infringement of video game rules,the author combines the three-step test of "abstraction-filtering-comparison" with the"overall perception method" and "internal and external analysis",I propose to extract the "ideas" and "public domain" of the video game rules according to the method of "abstraction-filtering".The "public domain" part of the video game rules is extracted according to the "abstraction-filtering" method,and the overall sensory comparison and partial protection are combined in the comparison,and the feelings of video game players are introduced to determine the substantial similarity of the video game rules.