December 22, 2017  Legal Daily   Page 8: Cases

(Reporter Yu Dongming; Correspondent Chen Yingying)

Today, Shanghai Intellectual Property Court made a second-instance judgment for the case that domestic film "The Autobots" was suspected of plagiarizing Disney animation "Cars". The court found that "The Autobots" constituted copyright infringement and unfair competition, and thus ordered a compensation of over RMB 1,350,000 to Disney and related companies.

In July 2015, domestic animation film "The Autobots" was screened in China. However, Disney and Pixar found that the film plagiarized their series movie "Cars" from name, character images to promotion posters, and later brought the producer Blue MTV, publisher Beijing G-Point and online content platform PPLive to court.

Pudong New Area People's Court of Shanghai, the court of first instance, held that characters "K1" and "K2" in the film and poster of "The Autobots" are substantially similar to the original characters "Lightning McQueen" and "Francesco Bernoulli" in "Cars" and "Cars 2" of Disney and Pixar, and thus constituted copyright infringement.

Meanwhile, "Cars" has become a name peculiar to well-known commodity through the frequent use and publicity of the copyright owner. In The Autobots' poster, half of the character "人" in its Chinese title "汽车人总动员" is obscured by a car wheel, making it even more similar in appearance to the Chinese title of Cars, which is "汽车总动员" and will easily cause the public to mistake the source of the film. Therefore, it constituted unfair competition for unauthorized use of a name peculiar to well-known commodity.

The court of first instance ruled that three defendants should stop the infringement; Blue MTV should compensate for Disney's and Pixar's economic losses amounting to RMB 1,000,000, for RMB 800,000 of which Beijing G-Point should bear joint and several liability; Blue MTV and Beijing G-Point should compensate for Disney's and Pixar's reasonable expenses incurred for stopping the infringement totaling over RMB 350,000.

Blue MTV and Beijing G-Point instituted an appeal to Shanghai Intellectual Property Court. They argued that as anthropomorphic means of expression was limited, the court of first instance had falsely recognized that the characters "Lightning McQueen" and "Francesco Bernoulli" of Disney and Pixar were expressed originally through personified eyes, mouth and combination of specific colors, which didn't exclude the elements available in the public domain.

The appellants also argued that the title of the film involved was "The Autobots". Blue MTV and Beijing G-Point had always declared that it was the first automobile racing film in China and the title "The Autobots" was clearly stated on the tickets, which, therefore, won't cause confusion and misunderstanding of the relevant public. Even if it constituted an infringement, the court of first instance had made a mistake by repeatedly adding up the compensation for copyright infringement and unfair competition, and the compensation amount determined based on statutory compensation amount was obviously too high.

After the trial, Shanghai Intellectual Property Court held that it is necessary to consider whether the resemblance between two groups of animation characters constitutes an original expression protected by the Copyright Law when determining if they are substantially similar. Although the anthropomorphic design of cars falls in the category of thought unprotected by the Copyright Law, the concrete expression means of anthropomorphism falls in the category of expression, which can be protected by the Copyright Law.

Besides, "Cars" has become a distinctive and popular title of series movies of Disney and Pixar, and constituted a name peculiar to well-known commodity. Blue MTV and Beijing G-Point used the title on the posters deliberately to confuse the relevant public, which could have caused confusion before the audience gets the tickets. 

With regard to the amount of compensation, Shanghai Intellectual Property Court held that copyright infringement and unfair competition were independent of each other in this case, which yielded different results. As the unfair competition results weren't assimilated by the copyright infringement results, the compensation amount determined by the court of first instance is proper based on comprehensive considerations.

To sum up, Shanghai Intellectual Property Court dismissed the appeal and affirmed the original judgment.

Legal Daily - Shanghai, December 21