"Moscow Action" stills
"Beijing Evening News" Zhang Lei
The TV series "Moscow Action", which aired in 2018, starred Xia Yu and Yao Qianyu, and gained a good reputation once it was broadcast. However, because of the copyright issue of the play and the script, the TV play was brought to the fore. The Putuo District People’s Court of Shanghai made a first-instance judgment a few days ago and found that Flag (Shanghai) Digital Media Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Flag Media), the producer of the play, constituted copyright infringement, and sentenced the company to compensate the plaintiff Ai Anjun for economic losses of RMB 1 million.
's defense The defendant claimed that the script was based on personally witnessed police dictation. The
Sino-Russian international train robbery incident caused a national sensation in the 1990s. The plot introduction of
shows that the TV series "Operation Moscow" was adapted from the sensational "Sino-Russian Train Robbery" in 1993: on the international train from Beijing to Moscow, a dozen criminals robbed passengers in the carriages. In order to catch the robbery gang, the Chinese police sent a special team headed by Chen Erli to Russia for arrest and embarked on a tortuous and thrilling pursuit in a foreign country. The
reporter learned that the plaintiff, Ai Anjun, was one of the participants in the hunt and was also the propaganda officer of the public security system of the Beijing Railway Bureau. He was the first author to publish an article about this historical event. In 1995, the movie "Sino-Russian Train Robbery" was based on Ai Anjun's work.
Ai Anjun sued that he had published more than 30 reports and documentary works related to the "Sino-Russian Train Robbery" since 1993. The TV series "Moscow Action" is adapted from the story of the "Sino-Russian Train Robbery" that he wrote.
Ai Anjun took Banner Media and the screenwriters Xu and Hu of "Moscow Action" to the court, believing that the defendant had misappropriated the bridge segment in the content of his work, stolen the bridge and adapted it into a TV series, and filed an economic claim of 1 million yuan. In response to the lawsuit, the defendant Banner Media stated that "Operation Moscow" was the person who had invited the historical event of the "Sino-Russian International Train Robbery" and that the police officer who handled the case, Cheng, served as the general counsel, based on Cheng's dictation. , And use him as the prototype of the protagonist of the TV series "Chen Erli", and the new TV series created by the relevant interviews with the police who participated in the case. The defendant
claimed that the play "Mo" did not refer to Ai Anjun's documentary literature and enjoyed independent copyright. Moreover, it is believed that relevant historical figures and events are objectively existing in history and are the common wealth of society, and there is no substantial similarity between the two works. What is the nature of
controversy?
It is reported that Cheng, the prototype of Chen Erli called by Banner Media, participated in the detection of the Sino-Russian train robbery and was the main commander of the operation at that time. The defendant’s evidence included a confirmation letter from Cheng. He admitted that as a witness to the incident, he verbally described the process and details of the actions that year, and agreed to Banner Media’s use of the dictated content and use it as the protagonist to create a TV script and Filming a TV series. Xu, the main screenwriter of
, also provided the court with notes of the interview with Cheng. Xu said that because he believed that Cheng's dictation was more reliable, he did not consider other data collection at the time, and he had not seen related movies and written works. As one of the witnesses, what is the nature of Cheng's oral statement? The verdict discusses this. The
judgment pointed out that although Cheng was one of the main participants in the Sino-Russian international train pursuit operation that year, he personally experienced criminal arrests, but he did not participate in all the arrests, interrogations, and escorts in all cases. . In an interview with Xu in 2015, Cheng stated that in addition to the actions he participated in, there were a lot of heroic deeds of other police officers. He disclosed these contents to Xu much later than Ai Anjun's published works since the 1990s.
The court therefore found that Cheng’s statement was quite similar to the content expressed in Ai Anjun’s work, and his oral statement was a repetition of the content of the plaintiff’s work and did not constitute a new work. And because Cheng's statement is not the first disclosure to the outside world, the content of his statement to Xu does not constitute an "oral work" in the sense of copyright law. Therefore, a TV script created based on Cheng's oral content cannot be regarded as original.
judged that
constituted a copyright infringement judgment of 1 million
Thejudgment took the defendant’s depiction and performance of the villain Zhao Jinhua in the TV series and scripts as examples, and held that the defendant’s expression of this role-scenes and scenes of multiple peony cigarette smoking, was obviously derived from the plaintiff’s work describing Zhao Jinhua’s smoking The plot of Jade cigarettes. The plot content of Zhao Jinhua's coquettish appearance and domineering personality are also consistent with the characters portrayed in the plaintiff's works. It can be seen that the TV scripts continue to use the plaintiff's works.
The court held that the description and performance of Zhao Jinhua's characters in the "Moscow Action" TV series and scripts were basically based on the plot expression described in Ai Anjun's works. Through the above examples and the comparison of the works of both parties in the court trial, it can be seen that the defendant’s TV script and the work published by the plaintiff have the same internal structure and plot collocation, forming a similar overall appearance. From the overall effect, the defendant is still a reproduction or adaptation of the plaintiff’s previous works.
In view of the fact that Xu and Hu have transferred the copyright of the script of "Mo" to Banner Media, Banner Media has been assigned by a third party the copyright to be the copyright owner of the "Mo" drama. Accordingly, the People's Court of Putuo District, Shanghai, in the first instance decided that Flag Media compensated Ai Anjun for economic losses of 1 million yuan in copyright infringement.
