To attract consumers, many companies like to choose personalized fonts for product packaging or poster promotion. However, commercial fonts usually have copyright protection and require permission from the font designer or copyright owner to be legally used, otherwise it may constitute infringement. Recently, the Jinshan District People's Court in Shanghai accepted a font infringement case. After mediation, the defendant, a commercial company, compensated the plaintiff, font designer Zhang, for corresponding economic losses. Zhang is a well-known font designer in the industry, and his design and creation have completed a certain font library. This font has sharp, upright, rigorous and generous strokes in design. Zhang discovered that a certain trading company, without authorized permission, prominently used the words "ti" and other words in the products of its online store, a food flagship store, for promotion and publicity. Zhang sued the trading company to the Jinshan District Court, requesting that the company immediately cease the sales and promotion of products related to characters, replace and destroy the outer packaging of products with a certain font library single character, and compensate the plaintiff for the economic losses caused by infringement and reasonable expenses paid to stop the infringement. The trading company acknowledges the fact of its infringement, but believes that it does not have subjective malicious infringement and is caused by work negligence. It is willing to reach a settlement with Zhang for damages compensation; Regarding Zhang's request to stop infringement and replace the outer packaging of goods, as there are tens of thousands of products involved in font infringement, the cost of packaging replacement is too high. We request the court to mediate. Finally, with the mediation of the court, both parties reached a licensing agreement on the use of fonts, and the trading company voluntarily compensated Zhang for his economic losses. The judge stated that although font works are not explicitly listed in the types of works listed in the Copyright Law, and Chinese characters themselves are also in the public domain and not protected by the Copyright Law, on the basis of universal Chinese characters, the artistic treatment of Chinese characters through changes in curvature, length, form, etc. has a certain degree of originality and reflects a certain degree of artistic beauty, and belongs to the type of art works protected by the Copyright Law. The defendant's commercial company, without authorization, printed the art work in question on the outer packaging of the goods, infringing on the right to copy the art work in question, and should bear the liability for infringement. In response, the judge reminded that font infringement cases have occurred frequently in recent years, and companies should raise their awareness of copyright protection for font art works and adopt defensive strategies for commercial activities such as using images or font libraries. For example, promptly contact the copyright owner to purchase genuine copies of the images or fonts used; Use free authorized images or fonts; Timely investigate promotional materials for commercial activities, ensuring that fonts or images with unclear copyright are not used; If the font or image is provided by a third party, the intended use must be clearly stated to the third party and permission must be obtained to avoid adverse effects on the normal operation and brand reputation of the enterprise. (Lai Xin She)
Edit：Zhou Shu Responsible editor：Wang Chen
Source：rmfyb.chinacourt.org
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