The traditional Chinese solar term Xiaoman, known as Grain Buds in English, fell on May 21 this year. On that day, Germany-based automaker Audi posted a video on its official platforms that explained the philosophical connotations of the term in Chinese culture. The meaning of Xiaoman is grains that are not yet ripe, suggesting that Chinese people prefer to leave room for growth as life often waxes and wanes.

The philosophical video gained many likes online but was soon found to be quite similar to a video posted by a blogger last year on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok. On May 22, Audi and the advertising agency M&C Saatchi apologized for the plagiarism.

Similarly, a hit dance drama, Poetic Dance: The Journey of a Legendary Landscape Painting, was also found to have been plagiarized. The performance is based on A Panorama of Rivers and Mountains, a famous painting from the Song Dynasty (960-1279). Its directors found that costumes and gestures of performers in a dance work released recently by a local TV network were quite similar to those in their original creation. Said broadcaster soon apologized and deleted the video.

While the Internet makes searching for information more convenient, it has made plagiarism much easier, with cultural products most vulnerable to the problem. As the Chinese Government has strengthened crackdowns on violations of intellectual property rights (IPRs) in recent years, it is attaching growing importance to cultural IPR protection to encourage original innovation and drive the growth of cultural industries.

Nevertheless, Yao Linqing, a professor at the Communication University of China, pointed out that cultural IPR protection requires the efforts of more stakeholder groups.

Threatened originality 

According to a report on IPR protection of online literature in China, released by the Copyright Society of China in May, losses caused by copyright piracy in the sector were worth 6.2 billion yuan ($930 million) in 2021, up 2.8 percent year on year. The figure accounted for about 17.3 percent of total market value of the industry.

The costs of piracy are low and it is hard to collect evidence to protect the rights of authors, according to the report.

As soon as authors release their works online, unauthorized platforms will copy them and provide them for free to generate revenue from advertisements. In addition, some writers copy scene descriptions and other expressions from multiple novels and use them in their own works.

IPR theft in artistic design and use of designs without authorization have also created difficulties for original creators. He Qian, a Beijing-based illustrator, shares her works on social platforms. She told Beijing Review she once found that another illustrator copied the composition and colors of her painting while claiming it as an original work. She also discovered the unauthorized use of her art on products such as phone cases and postcards sold online.

"Since social platforms mainly play the role of promoting information sharing, it is useless to turn to them for rights protection. All I can do is put my own logo on my paintings," He said, adding that social platforms do allow creators to name and shame the plagiarists if the latter fails to apologize and provide compensation for their wrongdoings.

With homegrown clothing companies emerging in recent years, some original brands, ranging from daily clothes to traditional Chinese dress, known as hanfu, have found themselves victims of plagiarism.

Ao Luojia, a Chongqing-based designer, is one of the first designers engaged in the hanfu industry. She told Lieyunwang.com, a service platform for startups, the traditional dress became popular and more businesses mushroomed starting from 2015 when supporting policies for traditional culture were introduced, but IPR protection was and is far from sufficient.

"Some consumers know little about hanfu, and are therefore more likely to turn to copied products. Hanfu clothing produced by popular brands is often imitated by other companies, which then claim they based the design on cultural relics or history books. Plagiarism has affected our businesses greatly," Ao said.

According to Ao, homogeneous design of traditional clothes will lead to loss of their cultural connotations. Since hanfu is a cultural product, she wants to explore distinctive features of traditional clothes of different regions, so as to make her creations stand out. In 2020, she joined the IPR protection program of e-commerce giant Alibaba.

To support original designers, Taobao, an online retail marketplace of Alibaba, established a blockchain-based platform for IPR protection in 2019. Sellers can upload pictures to the platform to save as evidence of their original designs.

According to the platform, it has cooperated with art design colleges to improve practices and raise IPR protection awareness of young designers to drive innovation and bring confidence to creators.

According to Xu Chunming, a professor at the Shanghai International College of Intellectual Property of Tongji University, in an article published by Legal Daily, public awareness on IPR has improved significantly, as an increasing number of netizens are now willing to pay for online content. And more creators use authorized background music, images and video clips in their works. That has driven the development of the cultural industries.

Against infringement 

The government has continuously introduced new policies, laws and regulations to enhance IPR protection. 

The revised Copyright Law took effect on June 1 last year, increasing the ceiling for statutory damages from 500,000 yuan ($74,994) to 5 million yuan ($749,940). It also changed the wording of "cinematographic works and works created in a way similar to cinematography" to "audiovisual works," which has expanded the scope of copyright protection.

In 2016, the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) established a service center in Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province. It provides fast response to IPR-related issues for local clothing enterprises and designers, which has cut the waiting time for patent approval from six months to one month. As of mid-2021, the number of IPR service centers across China had reached 28.

According to the CNIPA, the number of authorized patents in the country has exceeded 2.5 million over the past five years. Last year, the administration dealt with around 60,000 IPR infringement cases.

The authorities have been closing down some apps that provide overseas videos without authorization. To meet rising demand, some domestic video streaming platforms such as iQiyi and Bilibili have purchased overseas TV dramas and cartoons for audiences.

New technologies and business modes have promoted the transmission of works, while posing greater challenges to the identification of IPR infringement, according to Yao.

"Innovative solutions should be developed to cope with that and to collect evidence. Users' awareness of paying for IPR should also be enhanced to promote industrial development, which is a win-win result," Yao concluded.

(Print Edition Title: Invaluable Intelligence) 

Copyedited by G.P. Wilson 

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