小说改编游戏的维权路径探究

Research on the Approaches of Legal Protection of Novel Adapted Games

小说改编游戏是游戏的创作者基于在先小说进行改编而成的游戏。小说改编游戏的市场活动引起法律纠纷后,可能产生两种法律诉讼:一是著作权侵权诉讼;二是反不正当竞争诉讼。在司法实践中,维权方(通常是在先小说的著作权人)对于侵权方(通常是改编小说成游戏的著作权人)的侵权行为通常有三种维权途径:一是主张侵权方侵犯维权方的改编权;二是主张侵权方侵犯维权方的保护作品完整权;三是主张侵权方的改编游戏行为构成对在先小说的不正当竞争。但是,在现行法律规范下,维权方只采取其中一种维权途径则难以达到最好的维权效果。剖析三种维权路径的优劣以及各自的适用情形,可以发现,维权方并行主张著作权侵权和反不正当竞争的两种维权模式,最可能实现有效维权的目的。

Novel adapted game is a result of market behavior,which refers to those games adapted from previous novel in the market.Based on the legal practice of recent years,if novel adapted game caused legal disputes,there might be two kinds of cause of action:one is copyright infringement claim;the other is unfair competition claim.In practice,the claimant(usually the right holder of previous novel)has three approaches to protect their interests from the defendant(usually the creator of adapted game):the first is to claim that the defendant infringes the right of adaptation;the second is to claim the defendant infringes the right of integrity;the third is to claim that the defendant’s adaptation constitutes unfair competition in the market.However,under the current legislation,it is difficult for the claimant to achieve their goal by only make one kind of claim.After analyzing the advantages and disadvantages for the claimants of each approach,the best way to protect the claimant’s rights is to claim in both copyright infringement and unfair competition in legal proceedings.