版权流氓背后的版权保护问题

The Copyright Protection Problem behind the Copyright Troll

近日,视觉中国向摄影作品原作者维权一事引发社会热议。在这背后反映出了甚嚣尘上的版权流氓现象。现今知产界存在大量“版权流氓”,他们冒名登记他人权利以获取真实的权利证书,并通过向法院提起“侵权”诉讼或以此为威胁,从而迫使被投诉人“花钱消灾”。众所周知,知识产权保护的初衷是鼓励创新,如今却被某些人“工具化”用以牟利,明显与其目的背道而驰,以至于出现了“自己的照片被自己侵权”的闹剧。因此,文章将以版权流氓为对象进行研究,介绍版权流氓的产生原理和行为特征,分析如今我国法律规制版权流氓存在的现实困境,探讨解决版权流氓难题的方法路径,以期为司法实务处理相关问题提供参考。Recently, the issue of Visual China protecting the rights of the original authors of photographic works has triggered heated debate in society. Behind this reflects the rising phenomenon of copyright trolls. Nowadays, there are a large number of “copyright trolls” in the IP community, who register the rights of others under false names to obtain real rights certificates, and force the complainants to “spend money to eliminate the disaster” by filing “infringement” lawsuits to the court or threatening to do so. It is well known that the original intention of intellectual property protection is to encourage innovation, but now it is “instrumented” by some people for profit, which obviously runs counter to its purpose so that there is a farce of “their own photos are infringed by themselves”. Therefore, this paper will take copyright trolls as the object of research, introduce the generation principle and behavioral characteristics of copyright trolls, analyze the current practical difficulties in regulating copyright trolls in our country, and explore ways to solve the problem of copyright troll, in order to provide references for judicial practice to deal with related issues.