Does a company bear legal liability for exploit...

20.Does a company bear legal liability for exploiting a picture without signature to promote the products when the copyright owner knows its exploitation and claims the copyright?

According to Chinese law, copyright generally belongs to the author and to the person who signed the work.Usually, the copyright of a photographic work belongs to the photographer except in the case of special service works, legal entity works and special appointment terms,etc.The exploitation of a work in which another person enjoys copyright requires prior licensing from the owner but Copyright Law of China stipulates some exceptions that authorization is not required (refer to Section VI of this chapter for more details).If it does not fall into to the above-mentioned situations, whether it is a network or a real-life contact work, whether it bears a signature or not, it cannot be used without licensing.The copyright owner needs to bear the burden of proof when investigating the liability for infringement, including proving that he has a legitimate copyright in the infringed work.Therefore, in the case where the picture used without authorization is an unsigned picture, it is relatively more difficult for the copyright owner to prove.Sometimes,pictures on the Internet will be marked “reprint is welcome”.If the annotator is the copyright owner, the picture can be used; otherwise, the use of the image will still constitute infringement.Therefore, except for cases where permission is exempted according to the law, in order to use other people’s photographic works, one must contact the author to obtain authorization, specify the work name and label it with the author’s signature.(https://www.daowen.com)