Reporter Feng Xinyi, Zheng Weihan, Luo MaolinIn the first half of this year, the actual sales revenue of the domestic gaming market was 168 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 14.08%, and the scale of China's gaming industry continued to expand.With the continuous upgrading of local IP development capabilities and the gradual increase in reputation, pirated "Li Gui" has also begun to frequently come knocking on their doors. Famous game versions are being 'stolen', popular IP dolls are being imitated... Intellectual property protection is becoming a common issue that China's cultural and creative industry needs to face.In the digital age, facing various types of infringement, how enterprises, regulators, and markets can work together has become an important issue facing the industry.The shadow of the prosperity of the IP industryIn July and August this year, Shanghai is undoubtedly the city with the highest anime content in China. In recent years, as the core gathering place of China's new generation of game and animation enterprises, Shanghai has cultivated a group of influential game and animation enterprises.As the scale of original IP enterprises continues to grow, various new types of intellectual property infringement behaviors are also closely following: a screenshot of a secretly taken test screen; A long-standing game "facelift" lawsuit; A bunch of pirated popular IP dolls... These have become a problem that troubles businesses. The core logic of the IP industry lies in its cultural valuation system, and various forms of piracy are actually undermining this system, causing fundamental damage to the IP itself. ”A person in charge of a trendy toy company told reporters.Various types of new infringements are more common in the gaming industry. The person in charge of miHoYo told reporters that the company is currently facing various types of intellectual property infringement issues. "In addition to common cheats, private servers, and pirated peripherals, game leaks have also become a major problem for the company in recent years.A public lawsuit shows that a person who participated in the game's internal testing and signed a confidentiality agreement previously secretly filmed and recorded the test content and images of new characters, skill effects, skill data, etc. of miHoYo's games without permission during the internal testing period, and repeatedly disclosed them to third parties, resulting in the public disclosure of relevant test game images. This directly disrupts our established operational plan, "said the person in charge.This is not an isolated case. According to the "2024 IP Rights Protection Report" released by Shengqu Games, "Legend" IP, as a classic work of Shengqu Games, has been particularly infringed, accounting for over 92% of the infringement. Among them, private server cheating accounts for about 43%, and adaptation "skin swapping" accounts for about 52%.Building a multidimensional rights protection systemAccording to incomplete statistics from Shanghai Xinghan Law Firm on public cases, the majority of game infringement lawsuits have compensation amounts below 10000 yuan, with only a single digit percentage of cases having compensation amounts above 1 million yuan.Many trendy gaming companies with popular IPs are also deeply mired in the above-mentioned difficulties. LABUBU's rapid emergence this year has put our production capacity at a bottleneck. ”The person in charge of Pop Mart told reporters, "But this gap has given piracy an opportunity to take advantageZhang Bochao, Senior Partner of Shanghai Xinghan Law Firm, believes that with the deep integration of AI technology in industries such as gaming, culture, and creativity, intellectual property protection is also facing new challenges. The content generated by AI often integrates multiple sources, making it difficult to clarify the power chain.How to break the deadlock? At present, relevant industry companies are strengthening cooperation with regulators and actively building a multidimensional rights protection system.In March of this year, the legal department of miHoYo opened accounts on social media platforms such as Bilibili, Weibo, and WeChat to publicly disclose the progress of the company's rights protection and collect infringement clues. Giant Network has also formed a normalized linkage mechanism with judicial institutions and industry associations, implementing a dual track system of "technical monitoring+legal accountability" to respond to infringement behavior. In addition, in 2024, Shengqu Games reported 138 cases of private server cheating to the public security organs, filed 23 civil lawsuits, sent over 2800 complaints and letters to the platform, and initiated 54 administrative reports.The judicial authorities are also constantly innovating protection mechanisms. In April, the Supreme People's Court released a typical case of intellectual property rights in the People's Court of 2024, and MiHoYo's lawsuit against the Pudong New Area People's Court in Shanghai for "infringement of trade secrets by undisclosed characters in a 'spoiler' game" was selected. The Supreme People's Court pointed out in the report that the criteria and rules for determining trade secrets in this case involving undisclosed character designs and other information in the game are of positive significance for promoting the healthy development of the gaming industry.Recently, the Xuhui police in Shanghai, after careful investigation and receiving reports from relevant enterprises, quickly cracked down on a criminal gang that sold counterfeit registered trademark goods, seized more than 5000 counterfeit trendy toy dolls, and involved sales of more than 12 million yuan.Article source: Shanghai Securities Journal
Beijing, August 26 (Xinhua) -- According to official data from China, as of June 2025, the number of effective invention patents in the western region has reached 531000, the number of effective registered trademarks has reached 7.006 million, a total of 978 geographical indication products have been recognized, and 2399 collective trademarks and certification trademarks have been approved for registration as geographical indications, all of which have maintained steady growth.The China National Intellectual Property Administration's August regular press conference was held in Beijing on the afternoon of August 26. Heng Fuguang, the spokesman and office director of the China National Intellectual Property Administration, released the above data in his opening presentation, saying that it fully shows that the innovation capacity of the western region is continuously improving, becoming an important part of high-quality development of China's intellectual property cause.Heng Fuguang pointed out that in the western region, the China National Intellectual Property Administration mainly carried out the work of building industry benchmarks, optimizing the innovation environment, promoting transformation and application, and expanding opening up.Among them, in terms of promoting transformation and application, a model enterprise cultivation library for patent industrialization has been established, and 2361 high growth enterprises in the western region have been selected, accounting for a quarter of the country's total; Multiple cross regional patent conversion and docking activities were held in Xi'an, Shaanxi, Baotou, Inner Mongolia, Urumqi, Xinjiang, and other places, with a signing amount of nearly 210 million yuan. In terms of expanding opening up to the outside world, the 18th China EU Directors' Meeting was held in Chengdu, Sichuan last year, and the 16th China ASEAN Intellectual Property Directors' Meeting will be held in Xi'an, Shaanxi this year.At the press conference, Shen Liping, Director of the Shaanxi Provincial Intellectual Property Bureau, introduced the "Shaanxi Answer Sheet" on "Accelerating the Construction of a Western Demonstration Province with Strong Intellectual Property Rights". She said that in recent years, Shaanxi's creative vitality has continued to burst, and the benefits of intellectual property utilization have been accelerated. The implementation of the "Lingxi Plan" for the transformation and application of intellectual property rights has focused on breaking the "blind spots" between technology supply and industrial demand, effectively promoting the efficient transformation of intellectual property rights from "laboratories" to "production lines".At the same time, Shaanxi is committed to building a highland for intellectual property protection, taking the lead in completing comprehensive legislation on intellectual property in the western region, establishing a provincial intellectual property big data public service platform, optimizing the business environment in the field of intellectual property throughout the province, establishing overseas intellectual property rights protection assistance workstations in the UK and Kazakhstan, and establishing a foreign-related intellectual property service cooperation body.Shen Liping stated that in creating a new pattern of open development, Shaanxi has established cross regional and high-level intellectual property cooperation mechanisms with the Guangdong Hong Kong Macao Greater Bay Area, nine provinces in the Yellow River Basin, and others; For four consecutive years, the Silk Road International Expo held intellectual property cooperation and exchange activities among countries (regions) along the "the Belt and Road"; This year, we innovatively held the Silk Road (Shaanxi) International Geographical Indication Product Trading Conference, leading a new trend in international geographical indication trade cooperation.Yang Zuotao, Deputy Secretary General of Xi'an Municipal Government, answered media questions and said that as a millennium ancient capital and innovative city, Xi'an has integrated the protection of intellectual property rights throughout the entire process of historical and cultural renewal, inheritance, expression, and development in promoting the integration of tradition and modernity.He revealed that relying on the mechanism of joint construction with the China National Intellectual Property Administration, "Xi'an Intellectual Property Trading Service Center" is building a trading hub and achievement transformation platform integrating patent, trademark, copyright, technical achievements and other elements, and plans to officially operate in October this year.Article source: China News Network
