Jin Yong's hand tour rights protection

Since the middle of August 2013, the two companies have released information on joint rights protection. It has been eight months since then. The storm of Jin Yong’s genuine rights-defending rights between the two companies is still not over.

Let's set the time back to September 2013 - those players who invested thousands or even tens of thousands in the mobile game "The Big Head" will still be happy when they are still happy in the game. "Big Head" is a game that has not been authorized by Jin Yong, and 10 million yuan in real money that gamers have contributed to the game company has been paid to Jin Yong by the game distribution developer, Crab Technology, as compensation for infringement. . I am afraid that even Jin Yong himself did not think that mobile games could generate such large profits. And just two months ago, in July 2013, when Changyou bought 20 mobile games with 20 million yuan in a one-time buyout right for the development of 10 martial arts novels, there were also people who said, “You swim into the water, right?”

What happened in these six months?

"Big Brother is watching you." Who is watching the old mobile game developers who have misappropriated Jin Yong copyright? Why is rights protection and perfection, not Jin Yong's own publisher? Changyou and Perfect World are completely different from each other in the copyright of Jin Yong's novels. Why did the two companies have to sit together opposite the infringing company and join hands to safeguard their rights? And why did Jin Yong open up the "big header" network?

This article will try to answer these questions.

â–  Profit Driven and Justice Driven - Jin Yong's Authorization Question

The precondition for answering all questions is to first understand how Jin Yong’s mobile game copyright is authorized.

The copyright of Jin Yong's own works, the sole authority of the organization, is Hong Kong's Minghe Publishing House, the publisher of his works. Or it can be said that the publishing house itself is Jin Yong himself. Whether it is Hong Kong, mainland China or Taiwan Province, all of Jin Yong's works are authorized by Minghe Press. Jin Yong's copyright was licensed to game companies, initially only the right to adapt PC online games, and later increased the right to adapt mobile games (page travel does not have a separate copyright, access to PC-side travel rights is equivalent to get page tour of copyright).

Jin Yong has a total of 14 martial arts themed novels, including Perfect World as early as in 2011 signed the game adaptation rights of 4 works such as “Yi Tian Tu Long Ji”, “Swordsman”, “The Legend of Condor Heroes” and “The Condor Heroes”. After that, the right to reorganize the four mobile games is also logically attributed to the perfect world. The rights to the mobile games adaptation of the remaining 10 works (the copyright of the “Vietnam Girl Sword” is included in the “Xiamenxing” copyright, such as 11 separately), we mentioned earlier, in July 2013, officially authorized to Changyou. This is also related to the success of Changyou's operation of the products of Tianlong Babu and Ludingji in the Duanyou era.

The driving forces for Changyou and the perfect fight against infringers come from two aspects. The first is their own economic interests. The fight against the infringers' works ensures that the player groups that love Jin Yong's works will not be diverted by the infringing games, thus giving the company's game belts. More economic income. The second driving force comes from Jin Yongfang.

Jin Yong and Minghe Publishing, which he owns, have been suffering from piracy. Previous piracy was concentrated on books. The threshold for making pirated books was low. The discovery and recovery costs were too high to find and combat them. Compared with them, infringing game products that were easy to find, easy to recover and had a high compensation amount were obviously It is a better goal. At the same time, according to industry practice, the compensation for “infringing copyright” products is entirely owned by Jin Yongfang, which also allows Jin Yong and Ming He Press to take the initiative to fight against infringement. While acquiring the right to adapt mobile games of Jin Yong's works, Changyou and Perfect also shouldered the responsibility of combating infringement. In the attachment of the authorization contract, the right of prosecution of “combat infringement” was clearly granted to Changyou and Perfect, and the two companies were required to assume the responsibility of combating mobile game infringement in mainland China.

Or in other words, if the two companies do not perform well in the field of mobile game rights protection, it is a breach of contract.

Authorizing two game companies to represent Jin Yongwei, this is not all, Jin Yong will also take the initiative to focus on infringement. After Minghe Press finds infringing products, it will promptly inform Changyou and Perfect two companies, and then the two companies will carry out specific rights protection issues.

In order to crack down on infringers faster, both Changyou and Perfect have established their own internal rights protection team. Take Changyou as an example, the company's rights protection team is composed of members from the departments of technology, legal affairs, government public relations, and media public relations. The main responsibility of the technical department is to discover games that are suspected of being infringed on the market, while other departments are mainly responsible for cracking down on infringing works. When the target is found, the members of the rights protection team will quickly start their operations. The marketing department will negotiate with the media and channels, and the legal department will issue an attorney letter to the infringer and proceed with the preparation of legal proceedings. In the past year, the rights protection team has succeeded in allowing more than one hundred games suspected of being infringed to be modified or removed.

â–  "For the sake of Jin Yong fans, open the door to the Big Head."

In the copyright disputes concerning mobile games, the “big header” infringement was the most noticeable. In August 2013, "Big Head" developed by Beijing Crab Science and Technology became the first goal of rights protection. On September 25, 2013, the Haidian Court announced that it accepted Sohu Changyou's case of suing Crab Technology for the “Jin Yong Game Adaptation Right”. On the next day, the two parties ended the dispute by way of settlement out of court.

According to a survey conducted by the Tule Network reporter, out-of-court reconciliation is the result of discussion among the Quartet (Changyou, Perfect, Jin Yong, and Crab Crab). Crab Technology has repeatedly tried to contact Jin Yong and Changyou to try to seek out-of-court reconciliation. The reason why Crab Technology used to convince Jin Yong is: "If you forcefully delete or change the character cards in Jin Yong's works, the player who owns these cards will be hurt, and many players are fans of Jin Yong's works, and some even in the game. Thousands of dollars were invested."

After a thorough study of the game and careful consideration, Jin Yong’s team accepted this reason. “Mr. Jin Yong feels that there is no way for this matter. Infringement is already a established fact. It can punish developers who defend rights, but it can't hurt the players. Many players are in the game. Invested tens of thousands of RMB to obtain the card of the corresponding character. If you forcibly delete the Qiaofeng card or change the name of the character, the player will easily get angry with the original.” .

Of course, playing with crabs is definitely not to rely on the reason of this affection to impress the plaintiff, but also to play the corresponding economic compensation. After the reconciliation, the crabs continued to use the limited rights of Jin Yong's characters in the Big Head. However, this game is limited to this power. Any other mobile game products that play with crabs can no longer use the relevant characters and names of any of Jin Yong's works. The Big Head is also no longer available for any sequel.

Crab Technology wrote in a letter of apology on October 9, 2013: “We solemnly promised and promised that we would not develop R&D without Mr. Cha’s (ie Jin Yong’s) prior approval in addition to “Big Head”. Any element of Mr Cha’s martial arts novels is used in and/or operated in any game and he does not use or apply for registration of any words or signs related to Mr. Cha’s martial arts works in China or other countries in the world.”

"Big Head" is just a special case, and this special case does not appear in other infringing games.

â–  Channel pressure is better than legal proceedings - "Three Swordsman"

While dealing with "Big Head", Changyou and Perfect have published lawyer letters one by one against Android and Apple Store's allegedly infringing hundreds of games. Each of the two companies examined the issue of infringement of the authorized portion of the game. The infringing game is either closed down or accepts amendments. After the change, it must be confirmed through smooth swim and perfect review.

After about half a year in 2013, rights infringement has been very few. But to be impressed with perfection and comfort, in February 2014, Jin Yong reflected that they discovered an infringing game, namely ARPG's sole agency, ARPG, “Three Swords Heroes” — which made activist actions look a bit like a game. Hit the hamster game.

When the game entered the test, it began to promote. The name of the characters and gangs in Jin Yong's novels such as Xiao Longnian, Ouyang Feng, Xiao Bang, Kunlun, and Wu Dang are publicly appearing in the game's promotional videos.

After discovering infringements on music games, Changyou and Perfect began to gather evidence, do notarization, file a case, and sue. After taking full legal proceedings, both parties made initial contact. Although initially happily tempted to shirk it, it made the company's usual practice - launching game developers to apologize. However, with the development of the situation, the two sides conducted face-to-face communication.

These all reflect that the fact that rights defenders often feel helpless in the fight against infringement is that infringers are not so afraid of legal means. Mobile games naturally possess the “advantages” of infringement, the difficulty and cost of mobile game development are low, and a large number of small and medium-sized development teams are influential. For these teams, “money making” and “survival” are more important than copyright. The short life cycle of mobile games can allow infringers to take a quick cash and get away.

A lawyer who had participated in copyright litigation explained to Tule.com: “The time is too long. From one case to another, the case is often a thing of the past half year. Many developers are small teams, a total of more than a dozen people. The game is quick money. You tell him here. He sees it as a propaganda for himself. When he judges that the life cycle of the game is over, he will simply go bankrupt. Even if the person takes the computer to change his office, he will go to the next round."

Changyou and Perfect had been very upset about this, but then they found a shortcut - putting pressure directly on the operating channel. “Channels are very concerned about copyright issues. Channels with great influence will basically involve intermodal operations. There are joint and several liabilities in the legal sense. They may have more consequences for the infringement issue than the small development team.” Members of the group said to Tule.com: “When we gather enough evidence, we will prioritize coordination with the channel partners, sometimes notifying the channel provider even earlier than the developer’s time.”

This approach is not smooth swim and perfect originality. According to the survey of TCL.net, most manufacturers, including NetEase, will first exert pressure on the channel when they encounter infringement. Compared with developers, the channels upstream of the mobile food chain in the mobile game are obviously more concerned with their own safety issues. There are many products to choose from, and the conditions are mostly similar. There is no reason for the channel to get into trouble. Compared with lawsuits that received the “half-year trial,” developers are even more worried that their products will be removed from the market – which means that developers may immediately lose revenue.

Changyou directly connected with the Apple App Store, Google Play, Baidu, 360 and other influential channels to reach a tacit agreement. When a game suspected of infringement was discovered, Changyou would notify the channel to remove it from the first time. Changyou even established direct contact channels with Apple, which allows them to directly communicate with the responsible Apple employees.

Although in theory, both Changyou and Perfect are eligible to initiate lawsuits and recover damages to the channel agents involved, but they are very cautious in exercising their rights. “We don’t want to report to distributors. After all, they are also us. The partners, but in view of the joint and several liability of the channel distributors, are sometimes inevitably involved in prosecution of one or two channels when taking legal proceedings,” said one respondent who had participated repeatedly in the fight against infringement: “But we The requirements for developers will be more stringent, they must first remove the shelf, and then modify, and then give the revised version to us (Changyou and perfect) review, we give the review of qualified opinions submitted to the channel, channel business talent Let's put the game back on the shelf." So the crackers who hold the copyright have found a very effective way. "After we and the channel have finished rounds, the infringing works are basically invisible." The rapid revision also has a direct relationship with the pressure of the channel."

And, intriguingly, in the development phase of the game, in order to circumvent the possible copyright risk, game developers have already made two different versions in advance. After being pressured by the channel, "Three Swords Heroes" changed the game in a short time.

â–  Can rights protection count as "copyrighted enclosures"? - Back to "Runaway Martial Arts"

Numerous people had predicted that the 2014 conference would be a year of frequent mobile copyright lawsuits. From now on, it seems that large developers with strength have begun to use copyright as a barrier, and small and medium-sized developers have attached importance to copyright because of several times. Massive lawsuits quickly increased. This is a good thing both in the long and the short term.

Tulenet.com tends to view perfect rights protection as a landmark event in the industry. It will and will already be affecting the direction of the industry. Many companies that own IP have started their own positive rights protection. Shanda has already brought 16 companies to court on the Legend of Legends; Japan’s Toei Animation teamed up with DeNA and Perfect in April, and started rights protections for many famous anime works such as “One Piece” “Dragon Ball” and “Saint Seiya”. In addition, NetEase Dinglei’s real-name report “Pocket Fantasy” and other cases that we reported previously reflect this situation.

Some media have turned this large-scale game company's behavior of maintaining its own IP copyright into a “copyright enclosure,” which sounds somewhat negative. In any case, although the rights protection brought short-term pains and dampened the interests of some practitioners, in the long run, the sound development of the opponent travel industry is of positive significance.

Over the years, our society has been widely criticized for copyright issues. The bitter fruit is actually our own responsibility. That is the backwardness of the cultural industry. In the final analysis, copyright is the core interest of the cultural industry in the broad sense.

It should be noted that game development companies that infringe upon Jin Yong’s copyrighted works are not all small companies that do not enter the market. Many game companies that have a reputation for brand image also participate. In addition to the publishing companies of several of the works mentioned above, the issuer of the “Rioted Martial Arts” was Kunlun Wanwei – a company that has been famous since the page travel era and currently ranks among the top five mobile publishers, and is very Companies that will soon be listed.

The methods used in the "Runaway Martial Arts" are similar to those of "Three Swordsman":

The first move is well-prepared: When the game is developed, it is likely that two versions of infringement and non-infringement have been made. According to Changyou and the perfect person in charge, in February this year, on the weekend of the week when they sent out a lawyer's letter to Kunlun, the two parties had already made contact. In the second week, the relevant responsible persons of the two sides met and negotiated. Less than one week after the negotiation, the revised version of the game was submitted to Changyou and the perfect audit.

The second move, shirk responsibility: Kunlun Wanwei in the process of communication will be all responsibility for the infringement of developers to bean interaction.

The third measure, Jin Hao shelling: At the same time, Kunlun Wanwei believes that the product project infringement risk is high, so the game iOS version of the distribution rights transferred to a company called dream mobile game company, this company January 10, 2014 The day has only just begun. The official website address of the game is also changed. According to insiders, "The initial filing of this domain name has not come and is well handled. It is very likely that Kunlun Wanwei agreed in a short time." The source also hinted that the dream mobile game is also a family with Kunlun Associated company.

How can we - if our mobile game industry really does not have these so-called "copyright enclosures" behavior, it will really be a piece of land? Take a look at the behavior of “runaway martial arts” and the previous infringing publishers, and I’m afraid that each of us has come up with our own answers.