News from our newspaper (reporter Chen Peipei, correspondent of Hu Sixing, Tang Ke) published short videos on the Internet. Because the overall story content is similar to the videos published by others, it is generally considered as infringement. Recently, the Chengdu Intermediate People's Court of Sichuan Province made a second instance judgment on the short video copyright ownership and infringement dispute case, maintaining the first instance judgment of the Jinjiang District People's Court: the publicity video of the Chengdu Universiade shot and produced by the defendant is different from the plaintiff's right works in character settings, character relationships, specific plot and logical order, which does not constitute substantive similarity, It does not constitute infringement, and the judgment rejected all claims of the plaintiff.

In 2021, Company A filmed a short video featuring pandas, and its contribution to the public was publicized. After that, Company B and Company C published a promotional video of the Chengdu Universiade on their jointly operated WeChat video account and Tiaoyin. There was a problem that the content of the whole story was similar to the short video submitted, so they filed a lawsuit on the grounds of copyright infringement.

After hearing the case, the court of first instance held that the three segment narrative structure of the short video involved in the case, the elements of panda and man in black, and the expression method of news report style opening are common elements and methods in audio-visual works, which can be used by the public. If there are only similar inherent elements in the public domain between two works, it does not necessarily constitute copyright infringement. By comparing the accused infringing short videos with the works involved in the case, it is found that there are obvious differences between the accused infringing short videos and the works involved in the case in the creation background and the style and emotion expressed in the lines, and they are not consistent in the characters, plot and logical design. From the perspective of character settings and character relationships, the main characters of the works involved in the case are pandas and people in black looking for pandas. The main characters of the accused infringing short videos are alien children and people in black looking for alien children. There is a significant difference between all the characters of the accused infringing short videos are children, and the works involved are adults and children acting together; Although there are both pandas and people in black, they have different settings on the relationship between pandas and people in black. The panda in the works involved is the main character, and the whole story revolves around the behavior of pandas. The panda in the short video of the alleged infringement is a prop, and the whole story revolves around the behavior of alien children. From the perspective of specific plot and logical sequence, the works involved in the case are the panda escaping to the cinema to watch the movie. The action of the people in black who help to stop the tracking is to imitate the plot of the movie being played on the screen. The accused infringement short video is that the panda was stolen by an alien child and passed the Sichuan Opera stage with local characteristics in the process of escape, The man in black was blocked by the Sichuan Opera performers on the stage; At the end of the work involved, the panda who was about to be taken away presented the little girl with Popsicle, echoing the plot of Popsicle in the movie "Kung Fu" played in the cinema at that time. The accused infringing short video showed the alien child recalling that when he came to the earth, the earth child presented Popsicle to him to show his kindness. On the whole, the accused infringing short videos did not use the original expression of the works involved, and the accused infringing short videos and the works involved do not constitute substantive similarity, which does not constitute infringement. The court of first instance decided to reject all the claims of the plaintiff Company A.

The plaintiff appealed against the judgment of first instance. The Chengdu Intermediate People's Court rejected the appeal and upheld the original judgment. Now the judgment has come into force.

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