Kwun Lin, Copyright Protection for Fictional Character

Date & Time: April 19 (Wednesday), 3:30 p.m.-4:30 p.m.

Venue: STL New Building 303, PKU Shenzhen

Speaker: Kwun Lin, Ph.D. Candidate of Law at Tsinghua University School of Law and Editor-in-Chief of Tsinghua Intellectual Property Law Review

Lecture Description:

Characters play critical roles not only in the stories they appear, but also in contents industry for themselves serve as the symbol of stories. Copyright provides exclusive protection for original works of authorship fixed in a tangible medium. There is no doubt that the visual image of a character from a drawing, movie, comic, etc. and, the written description of that character by the author is protected by copyright. But what about the trait and attribute that truly defined the character in its core? Whether “the character itself” are entitled for independent copyright protection? U.S. copyright law has extensive experience in developing tests to determine whether copyright protection should be granted to a fictional character. This presentation will discuss the tests and their applications from comparative perspective, introduce how fictional character can be protected in copyright law and the remaining difficulties.