Artificial Intelligence Cases in China: Feilin v. Baidu and Tencent Shenzhen v. Shanghai Yingxin

Abstract

In 2019, two court rulings in China on the issue of copyrightability of AI creations received international attention. It was reported that in Feilin v. Baidu, known as the first AI case, the Beijing Internet Court denied copyright of AI creations, whereas the Shenzhen Nanshan District People's Court acknowledged copyright of AI creations in the Tencent Dreamwriter case. The two cases, however, were quite similar, as they acknowledged copyright of AIassisted, not AI-generated, written works and recognized these works as a work of a legal entity. The difference between the two judgments is that the Beijing Internet Court regarded originality as an independent requirement and judged it according to the objective standard, whereas the Shenzhen Nanshan District People's Court regarded human creation as part of the requirement of originality. In this sense, it was the Beijing Internet Court that actually made the more favorable judgment on an AI-generated work.

Navigating the legal landscape of AI copyright: a comparative analysis of EU, US, and Chinese approaches

“…One of the cases is the Feilin v. Baidu, involves a ruling by the Beijing Internet Court in China regarding the copyright protection of an AI-generated work. The disputed work was a report titled "Analytical Report on the Judicial Big Data in the Film and Entertainment industry: Film Industry in Beijing", which was created using software called Wolters Kluwer China Law and Reference [14].…”

“…Some drawings and words in the disputed report were not the same or similar to those in the software-generated report. The court concluded that the disputed report had not been generated by the software alone and was created by the plaintiff's team, making it eligible for copyright protection under Chinese law [14].…”

“…However, the court held that a production created by a natural person is a necessary condition for a work to qualify for copyright protection. It stated that although the content generated by intelligent software may resemble work produced by a natural person, it is not possible to disregard the fundamental tenets of copyright law, including the notion of authorship [14].…”

“…The court stated that the developer's investment is rewarded through payment for the use of the software and that there is no need to protect their interests. However, the software user's investment in the report by paying for the software should be protected to ensure motivation for distribution and cultural dissemination [14].…”