On November 11, 2020, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress passed the latest revision of the Copyright Law.
The Copyright Law of China was enacted in 1990 and was amended respectively in 2001, 2010 and 2020. Moreover, in November 2020, China passed its third amendment.
In the 2020 amendment to the Copyright Law of China, relevant provisions are added to increase the severity of sanctions against copyright infringement, which are set as below:
(1) In order to protect copyrights and copyright-related rights, the right holder may take technical measures, and no one may avoid such technical measures. (Article 49, 50)
(2) The regulators can impose fines on infringers, the amount of fines is one to five times the revenue generated by the infringement. (Article 53)
(3) The cap amount of damages for copyright infringement is increased. If it is difficult to determine the actual losses of the right holder, the court can determine the amount of damages payable by the infringer based on a reasonable multiple of the license fees, i.e. 1- 5 times, which was 1-3 times before; if the license fees are also difficult to determine, the damages can be determined at the discretion of the court within the upper limit of CNY 5 million. (Article 54)