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1.According to Criminal Law of China, whoever commits the following acts for profit, gaining a fairly large amount of illicit income or revealing other serious circumstances, has committed a crime for copyright infringement: (1) copying and distributing written, musical, movie, televised, and video works as well as computer software and other works without copyright owner’s permission; (2) publishing books whose copyrights are exclusively owned by others; (3) reproducing and distributing audio and visual works without the permission of their producers; and (4)producing and selling fine art works which has fake signatures.

2.When a unit commits a crime of infringing intellectual property,there will be a fine imposed, and the principal person and other personnel of direct responsibility shall be punished according to the law.

Case 1: As the manager of Company A, H has made profits since 2016 by operating a game with others and hiring agents to sell virtual currency which can be used in the game.The source code of this game and the game copyrighted by Company B are extremely similar and Company A’s use was without Company B’s permission.((2018) Jing 0108 Xing Chu No.1932)(https://www.daowen.com)

The court held that: Company A and its direct supervisor H, who for the purpose of making a profit, reproduced and distributed computer software owned by others without the permission of the copyright owner.The circumstances were serious, and his behavior had constituted a crime of copyright infringement and should be punished.

Case 2: From 2012 to 2013, G and H collected more than 500 films and TV works from online sources.These works’ rights of information network dissemination were owned by Company T, Company L and others,but G and H uploaded these works without permission to three websites open to the public.The three websites provided the public with on-demand viewing service of the above-mentioned film and television works free of charge.At the same time, the websites profited by collecting fees from published advertisements on the webpages.((2015) Hai Xing Chu Zi No.33)

The court held that: For the purpose of making profits, G and H spread other people’s film and television works to the public through an information network and distributed other people’s copyrighted works without permission.The circumstances are serious, and their acts have constituted the crime of infringing copyright, which should be punished.