论视听作品的范围及权利归属

The Scope of Audiovisual Works and their Copyright Ownership

2020年修改的《著作权法》第17条用"视听作品"的名称取代了"电影作品和以类似摄制电影的方法创作的作品",并将其分为"电影作品、电视剧作品"和"其他视听作品",分别规定了著作权归属。前者著作权由制作者享有,后者则由制作者与作者约定。该规定是建立在有关"视听作品"的范围大于"电影作品和以类似摄制电影的方法创作的作品"的误解基础上的。它导致难以划分两类视听作品,同时"其他视听作品"的著作权归属对于潜在利用者而言将难以确定,因为约定将产生著作权归制作者、合作作者或其中特定合作作者的复杂可能性。此类视听作品的交易安全将由此受到损害,交易成本将不可避免地上升。建议将"其他视听作品"的范围局限于电子游戏的连续画面,同时认定潜在利用者有权信赖此类视听作品版权标识中标注的人就是权利人,以此减少修改后《著作权法》中视听作品著作权归属规则带来的负面影响。

Article 17 in the amended Copyright Law(2020)replaces the concept of"cinematographic works and works produced by aprocess analogous to cinematography"with"audiovisual works"and categorizes them as"cinematographic and TV serial works"and"other audiovisual works",applying different ownership rules.The ownership of the former belongs to the producer,while the latter is decided by the contract between producer and the authors.This provision is based on the false understanding that the scope of"audiovisual works"is larger than"cinematographic works and works produced by aprocess analogous to cinematography",and it leads to the extreme difficulty in distinguishing the types of audiovisual works.The ownership of the copyright in"other audiovisual works"will be unclear to the potential user since it might belong to the producer,co-authors or one of co-authors according to the contract.The legal safety of the trade of such works will be undermined and the legal cost will rise inevitably.This article suggests that the scope of"other audiovisual works"should be reduced to only include the serials of moving images of video games,and the potential users should be entitled to believe that the name appeared in the copyright notice attached to"other audiovisual works"indicates the copyright owner.In this way,the negative impact of the copyright ownership rule of audiovisual works in the amended Copyright Law might be reduced.