“游戏换皮”著作权法规制路径之商榷

Discussions on the Regulations to the Phenomena of“Copying Key Design but Changing Unimportant Design of Games”according to the Law of Copyright

经过若干年的发展,网络游戏行业已成为我国泛娱乐行业的重要领域。网络游戏具有更新迭代快、研发设计成本高、盈利渠道多元化等特点。垂涎于推出一款爆款游戏带来的巨额利益,但又碍于一款新游戏开发设计的高昂成本,导致了“游戏换皮”现象日益猖獗。为规制全盘抄袭规则的“游戏换皮”行为,实务界及学界倾向于将网络游戏规则认定为作品予以保护。但在现行著作权法下,游戏规则是否构成作品仍悬而未决。如果认为其构成作品,不仅会使游戏开发成本增加,在涉及游戏案件的具体侵权认定中,也会因为思想表达二分法的模糊性,造成司法成本大幅增加等一系列问题,不利于游戏产业的创新发展。

Online game industry has become an important field in pan-entertainment through so many years’development in our country.Online games show the following features such as quick update and iteration,high cost for research,development and design,diversified channels to gain profit,and so on.Since people covet the great profit of launching a hot online game,but are unwilling to offer high cost for launching a new game,the phenomena of“copying key design but changing unimportant design of games”have become increasingly rampant.In order to regulate the phenomena,both operational and academic fields tend to regard online game rules as works for protection.However,whether game rules should be defined as works or not has not been settled in current law of copyright.If they are defined as works,not only will the cost of launching games increase,but also a series of problems will be caused,for example,the judicial cost for the practice of defining infringement concerning games will increase to a great extent due to ambiguity of the dichotomy of thought expression,which is not good to the innovation and development of game industry.