News / Firm News

Art Exhibition Injunction

2020-06-17

Beijing East IP Law Firm (referred as “East IP Law Firm”) on behalf of Beijing Great Wonder International Cultural Technology Co., Ltd. (Great Wonder), sued a company operating culture and art development in Hefei for copyright infringement and unfair competition disputes, in which East IP Law Firm filed an application for behavior preservation on behalf of the client in order to prevent the further spread of the confusion and adverse effects caused by the defendant’s behaviors.

Hefei Intermediate People’s Court approved the application for injunction after examination, and ruled that the defendant should immediately stop using symbols, elements and the artworks protected by copyright and Anti-Unfair Competition Law in various ways. This ruling has established a typical precedent for injunction in the field of art exhibitions.

“Tribute to Da Vinci – the global light and shadow art experience exhibition” created by the plaintiff and Italian partners integrates the world’s most cutting-edge new media digital technology and combines viewing and experiencing, which is very classic and immersive light and shadow art. The exhibition has been successfully held in Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu and Changsha where received enthusiastic response.

With the rapid development of cultural and creative industry in China, the field of art exhibitions has gradually been bothered by infringement and counterfeiting. In this case, the plaintiff’s series of original artworks and other elements and symbols provided with a unique artistic value of show about Da Vinci’s life and works to consumers, and formed a core competitiveness of the plaintiff including the name of the art exhibition, etc., which should be protected by laws such as the Copyright Law, Anti-Unfair Competition Law. If the use of the defendant’s online ticketing and on-site exhibition (no more comments owing to the pending trial) is not prohibited in time, it is likely to cause irreparable damage to the plaintiff’s business value based on its intellectual achievements and legitimate operations, including increasing the confusion before consumers and the market, affecting the plaintiff’s license opportunities

In this case, East IP Law Firm’s attorney team actively provided evidence of the accused behavior in the preliminary stage and also in the public hearing stage, overcame the difficulties brought by the COVID-19 pandemic such as the quarantine after return to Beijing, and achieved a staged effect which effectively protected the legitimate rights and interests of the plaintiff.

This case fully reflects that the protection for intellectual property rights in our country have achieved significant improvement in terms of both substantive determination and procedural guarantee. The ruling of IP tribunal of Hefei Intermediate Court has provided good experience of IP rights protection for art exhibitions.

Attorney Lin ZHAO (Ms.), Chris LIU (Ms.), Tianle GAO (Mr.) and trainee attorney Xiaonan REN (Mr.) worked for this case.

Beijing East IP Law Firm was established in 2004, with headquarter in Beijing. For the past 16 years, Beijing East IP Law Firm has been focusing on providing a full range of legal services related to intellectual property rights for domestic and foreign companies, and has represented many typical cases. The timely, comprehensive, cost-optimized and business-thinking services have won unanimous praise for us from customers.