Recently, the Legislative Affairs Office of the State Council is soliciting public opinions on the Draft Amendments to China's Copyright Law (hereinafter as the “Draft Amendments”).
The Draft Amendments emphasize on the balance between copyright protection and dissemination of the works, the establishment of copyright authorization mechanism and market transaction rules and improvement of remedies for copyright owners. The Draft Amendments added provisions on registration of copyrights and other related rights and registration of the rights in the process of signing exclusive licensing and Assignment Contracts.
According to the Draft Amendments, users can access to the copyrighted works in digital forms when the copyright owner is not searchable, provided that they apply before related authorities and submit a certain amount of fee.
Furthermore, copyright collective management will extend to the use of published audio-visual works through VOD system or other approaches.
