同人作品是否侵犯在先作品著作权?——兼评金庸诉江南等著作权纠纷案

Does Fan Fiction Infringe Copyrights of Prior Works?——Commenting On Jin Yong VS Jiangnan and Other Copyright Dispute Cases

同人作品是否侵犯在先作品著作权问题的核心在于二次创作所借用的文学角色是否构成作品。从文学角色的要素来看,名称多非作者独立创作或过于简短,不能体现作者智力创作过程而不属于著作权法所保护的作品;文学角色除名称以外的其余各项抽象特征在未经充分描述的情况下属于思想的范畴,基于著作权法只保护表达的基本理念,作为各项抽象思想特征集合体的整体性文学角色,亦不能单独成为作品得到著作权法保护,以防止私人对公有素材的侵占而妨害他人创作自由。单纯借用文学角色进行二次创作不构成侵权,但如果借用的内容涉及充分描绘的故事情节并与在先作品构成实质相似,则可能构成侵权。

The heart of whether fan fiction infringes copyrights of prior works is whether literary characters borrowed by derivative works could be considered as works. Judging from the content which literary characters are supposed to have, firstly, their names are often not independent creations by authors of derivative works or are too short, therefore could not reflect the authors' intellectual creation process and are not protected by copyright laws. Secondly, other abstract features of literary characters belong to the category of thought when not fully described. Based on the fundamental idea that copyright laws only protect expression, literary characters, or combinations of abstract ideological features, could not be separately protected as works by copyright laws neither in order to prevent private encroachment of public material from hindering others' freedom of creation. Simply borrowing literary characters for derivative works is safe, but may infringe copyrights if the borrowed content involves a fully depicted storyline and is substantially similar to the prior work.