Remember IP Dragon’s 2007 article about font maker Beijing University Founder Sued Blizzard Over Font Copyright Infringements? In 2011 the Beijing Higher People’s Court decided that Blizzard did indeed infringe five of Founder’s copyrighted fonts. But even though Founder sought 408 million RMB in damages, it was only rewarded 1.4 million RMB. Not enough to cover 2.08 million RMB for litigation expenses. Read here.
On May 28, 2012 there was a the three-day United States-China Intellectual Property Adjudication Conference Organized by the China Law Society. The message of the conference was that fonts need to be classified as computer software and protected by the copyright law, as expressed by Ni Guangnan, an academic. In an interesting China Daily, Li Fusheng is writing: “China had dozens of typeface design companies in the 1990s. Now there are only five, including Founder.”
Zhang Jin, professor at the China University of Political Science and Law was quoted by Li Fusheng of China Daily saying: “If one typeface is original and can be “conceptually” separated from the character itself, it should be eligible for copyright protection. Lu Shan, a judge at the intellectual property tribunal of Nanjing Intermediate People’s Court, said a typeface should be entitled to legal protection as long as it is created independently, looks substantially different from all existing ones and has aesthetic value.”
Gao Fuping, of the School of Intellectual Property at East China University of Political Science and Law advocates that Chinese character fonts be given more protection to boost their development.
Zhang Ping, professor at Intellectual Property Law School of Peking University said that though the sum of compensation in the Copyright Law is likely to double to 1 million yuan it will not be appropriate for all cases. Zhang is referring to the statutory compensation in article 72 of the draft version of the Copyright Law March 2012.
It is clear that if China deems an industry crucial, such as the Chinese character fonts industry, it is willing to protect and enforce it in a different way as industries it does not view as crucial. So it seems unlikely that there will be a repetition of the low compensation awarded to a company such as Founder when there is a new case of copyright infringement of Chinese character fonts.