DEALS
Zhong Lun Assists Hanyi Fonts in Winning Damages of RMB 2.07 Million in a Landmark Font IPR Protection Case
Zhong Lun Assists Hanyi Fonts in Winning Damages of RMB 2.07 Million in a Landmark Font IPR Protection Case
Zhong Lun’s client Hanyi Fonts was legally licensed to exclusively hold all copyrights on Senty series fonts, including “Senty Tea Handwriting Font". The defendant Beijing Zimeng Technology Co., Ltd. (“Zimeng") had signed a cooperation agreement with the original copyright owner of “Senty Tea Handwriting Font" but went beyond the licensed scope by adapting “Senty Tea Handwriting Font" into “Senty Tea Handwriting Heart Font", “Senty Tea Handwriting Star Font", “Senty Tea Handwriting Music Font" and “Senty Tea Handwriting Bold Font". Zimeng continued disseminating the “Senty Tea Handwriting Font" and the adapted fonts through online platforms even after Hanyi Fonts issued a notice of termination of the cooperation agreement. Hanyi Fonts filed a lawsuit against Zimeng for infringement of its information network dissemination rights and adaptation rights. The first instance of this case was tried by the People’s Court of Haidian District of Beijing, and the Beijing Intellectual Property Court affirmed the decision of the trial court. Both courts found that Zimeng had infringed the font copyrights of Hanyi Fonts and ordered Zimeng to pay RMB 2.07 million in compensation.
This case is unprecedented in the copyright protection of fonts, as the courts found that the defendant had infringed not only the information network dissemination rights of the font copyright owner, but also its adaptation rights, ordering the defendant to indemnify the plaintiff RMB 2.07 million, including RMB 2 million for economic loss and RMB 70,000 for reasonable costs. The courts’ ruling that Zimeng had infringed the adaptation rights of Hanyi Fonts was based on their pioneering analysis of the following factors: (i) the structural characteristics of Chinese characters leave little room for improvement in embellishing fonts; (ii) whether the disputed fonts retain the original font style; (iii) whether the differences between the adapted fonts and the original one show any distinct style of expression; (iv) to what extent the adapted fonts are different from the original, such as the position and quantity of added elements, the choice of decorative patterns; and (v) whether the selected Chinese characters are frequently used in daily communication in the font library, and whether they reflect the designer’s unique choice and aesthetics.
This case provides an innovative method for judicial determination of infringement of font adaptation rights. It is also one of the font copyright infringement disputes in China where the copyright owner has received a relatively large amount of compensation.
Partner Yuanchao Ma and associate Ying Ying of Zhong Lun’s Shanghai Office provided full legal services for this case. The case was recently selected as one of the 2021 Beijing Excellent Cases of Judicial Protection of Intellectual Property Rights.
