Fonts, pictures, and office software usage compliance and infringement response for corporate intellectual property compliance

【Background】

Intellectual property is an eternal topic that cannot be avoided by enterprises, and it permeates all aspects of enterprises. Even though some types of daily business activities of enterprises seem to have nothing to do with intellectual property rights, in fact, there is already a "sword of intellectual property rights" hanging over the head of the enterprise, which can fall at any time. This article briefly analyzes font usage compliance, picture usage compliance, and office software usage compliance, which are most easily overlooked by enterprises but are also used most often by intellectual property rights holders. and to refer to when dealing with infringement.

【Brief description of the status quo of the case】

Some netizens ridiculed that if those engaged in self-media did not receive the infringement letter from Visual China, it means that they did not make enough big; Good proof that in the daily operations of all walks of life, whenever pictures or special fonts or office software are needed, more and more attention should be paid to the compliance of intellectual property rights. From the actual data:

1. For font infringement, take Founder Font as an example. After searching Beijing Peking University Founder Electronics Co., Ltd. with Tianyancha software and opening it, you can clearly see that there are more than 200 cases of court announcements and more than 460 cases of legal proceedings in the column of risk information. Randomly opening any batch of cases shows that they are all copyright infringement disputes, and the content of legal documents also shows that the reproduction rights and/or distribution rights of font works are infringed, and companies that use font works without authorization are required to bear the responsibility of stopping the infringement and compensating for economic losses.

2. For image infringement, take Visual China as an example. After searching for Visual China Cultural Development Co., Ltd. with Tianyancha software and opening it, you can clearly see that there are more than 17 cases of court announcements and more than 160 cases of legal proceedings in the column of risk information. . Randomly opening any batch of cases shows that they are all copyright infringement disputes, and the content of legal documents also shows that the information network dissemination rights or reproduction rights of picture works are infringed, and companies that use pictures without authorization are required to bear the responsibility of stopping the infringement and compensating for economic losses.

3. For office software infringement, take Microsoft and Adobe as examples. I believe that many companies have received lawyer letters from Microsoft, Adobe and other software companies or infringement letters from the legal department; among them, those who have purchased genuine Software companies, they will say in the letter that the amount of software actually used by the company does not match the amount purchased, and require the software used by the company to be legalized; and for companies that have not purchased legitimate software but are actually using such software , they will indicate in the letter that they have detected that the company is illegally using their office software, and hope that the company will contact them as soon as possible. Otherwise, the company will be punished by the relevant administrative department or will be taken to the law to investigate the infringement responsibility.

Among them, with regard to the number of cases involving Founder font infringement and Visual China image infringement, most of the above verifiable data are cases where the company failed to reach a settlement after receiving the copyright owner's lawyer letter or infringement letter and was resorted to the court; in fact, it may be There are many more cases that have not been made public because the parties have settled privately. For office software infringement cases, for office software that is used in large quantities, the software owner must be a large company with certain strength. Therefore, under normal circumstances, based on various considerations, the right owner of this type of software will generally target rights protection at purchasing power Most of the relatively large and medium-sized enterprises, after receiving a lawyer's letter or infringement letter from the software owner, will actively seek a settlement in order to reduce the impact. However, in recent years, after large and medium-sized companies have gradually realized the use of legalized office software and joint planning, software rights holders have continued to develop the market in order to "promote sales", and gradually set their sights on small and medium-sized enterprises. More and more small and medium-sized enterprises Enterprises began to receive infringement letters from the legal department of various office software owners, requesting to use their genuine software, otherwise they would bear the liability for infringement.

【Usage Compliance and Infringement Response】

1. With regard to usage compliance, that is, when using any fonts, pictures or office software in the commercial operation of the enterprise, it should be verified in advance whether the used fonts, pictures or office software belong to the scope of free use (such as the right holder declares that it can be used for free or has exceeded the legal protection period or falls within the legal scope of reasonable use); if the fonts, pictures or office software that must be used are not within the scope of the above three free uses, you need to obtain knowledge in advance before using Legal authorization of the property right holder.

In terms of specific operations, it is recommended that enterprises establish a compliance system at the institutional level from the very beginning of establishment. In the intellectual property compliance of the compliance system, it is clear that the use of external third-party intellectual property rights should comply with the corresponding procedures. For example, it is stipulated that employees must not Freely download fonts, pictures or office software from the Internet for direct use in commercial operations; when necessary, communicate with the legal department or an external counsel lawyer in advance whether or how to use them directly; sign with the intellectual property rights owner When authorizing, consider factors such as the scope of use, quantity, time, and referring to the authorization fee when the intellectual property right owner authorized other parties or the compensation for such intellectual property infringement cases obtained in public, and negotiate with the intellectual property right holder on a reasonable use fee wait.

2. Regarding the response to infringement, that is, how to deal with the company after receiving the lawyer's letter or infringement letter from the intellectual property rights owner, there are two situations:

1. If the alleged infringement of the enterprise is designed/produced by a third party entrusted by the enterprise, the entrusted design/or production agreement and other materials shall be retrieved as soon as possible to check whether there are corresponding clauses on intellectual property rights in the agreement. When the three parties complete the entrusted matters, they need to obtain the authorization of the intellectual property rights owner, and they must not infringe any rights of any third party; if there is such an agreement, the third party can be required to handle the relevant infringement matters. The most common commissioned design/production projects include corporate websites, product packaging, advertisements/posters and other promotional materials.

2. If the alleged infringement event of the enterprise is caused by the enterprise's own use, it needs to be handled by the enterprise itself; the processing can be divided into the following steps:

(1) After receiving a letter from a lawyer or a letter of infringement, first check whether the facts stated in the letter actually exist (such as whether there is infringement, whether the amount of infringement is consistent with the facts, etc.), if it does not exist or does not match, it is either true knowledge Property right holders simply send mass mails for mass commercial rights protection, and engage in "phishing"; Therefore, in this case, the enterprise needs to further verify the qualifications of the sender, requiring the sender to provide documents such as the business license of the enterprise, the license of the law firm and the lawyer who sent the letter, and the fact that it is the legal owner of the intellectual property rights it controls. Proof that the intellectual property is still within the statutory period of validity, and provide evidence such as the method of obtaining the infringement and the facts of the infringement, that is, the sender is required to prove that he is a legal and true intellectual property rights owner or legal agent, and that he has truly and legally mastered the intellectual property rights. Evidence that the enterprise has violated its intellectual property rights within the statutory validity period.

(2) If it is verified that the owner of the intellectual property rights is legal and true and the intellectual property rights are still within the statutory period of validity, and the fact of infringement is real, the company needs to delete or replace the infringing act immediately. The legal significance of deletion or replacement lies in that, first, if the intellectual property rights owner does not have legal fixed evidence (such as software fixed evidence such as screenshots but not notarized or court-approved time stamps), after deletion or replacement, intellectual property rights will be given. If the owner of the property right causes troubles in obtaining evidence, once the evidence is not recognized by the court, the enterprise will not be liable for the infringement; second, the enterprise voluntarily deletes or replaces the infringing behavior, which is a legal voluntary cessation of the infringing behavior, and can gain attitude points in the process of case handling. , to a certain extent, is conducive to reducing the responsibilities assumed.

(3) The reason why the intellectual property right owner chooses to send a lawyer's letter or infringement letter in advance to deal with such cases shows that the intellectual property right owner prefers to adopt a more efficient way of reconciliation to close the case, so negotiation is a necessary procedure in the reconciliation process . During the negotiation process, enterprises should pay special attention to the following aspects:

First, regardless of telephone communication or email/written reply, one cannot admit the existence of infringement facts, especially for office software infringement cases, the intellectual property rights owner may not have all the infringement facts (such as the number of infringements, etc.), so it is necessary to be cautious in words and deeds Otherwise, once the self-certification evidence is left to the other party (such as being recorded by the other party or obtaining written self-confession facts provided by the company, etc.), the company will be passive;

The second is not to easily accept intellectual property rights holders to negotiate in the office of the company, not to allow intellectual property rights holders to access any office computers and materials, and not to allow intellectual property rights holders to take pictures or record at the office site;

The third is that if the evidence of infringement has been fixed and determined to have constituted an infringement, when it comes to the amount of compensation or the cost of purchasing genuine licenses, you must pay attention to negotiation strategies and try your best to solve the problem at a lower reasonable price; what needs to be emphasized here is that generally The obligee will give a higher amount when claiming compensation, but in fact, most of the final amount judged by the court will be much lower than the amount requested by the obligee. For example, when it comes to image infringement, the obligee may request a The compensation for each picture is 1-2000 yuan, but in fact the court may only award 300-800 yuan in compensation in the end. Therefore, the enterprise needs to know the similar judgments of this type of obligee to know itself and the enemy; at the same time, if the enterprise needs to When the relevant intellectual property rights of the obligee will be used many times, it is possible to directly obtain the follow-up legitimate right to use, and sign a longer-term or permanent use agreement with the obligee on the grounds of long-term cooperation (in fact, this method is the effect that the obligee most wants to achieve), when signing the genuine use agreement, it is agreed to only pay the preferential license fee stipulated in the agreement, and to exempt all infringement compensation matters before the agreement is signed. Among them, if an enterprise has an industry association or a joint organization such as a chamber of commerce, the association or organization or a number of similar enterprises can sign a package framework license/purchase cooperation agreement with the obligee, and members of the association or chamber of commerce or multiple similar enterprises can share knowledge Property rights use/purchase license fee, which can reduce the cost of obtaining authorization for a single enterprise.

(4) If the company does not communicate well with the right holder and directly enters the litigation procedure, the company should hire a professional intellectual property lawyer to intervene, and the professional lawyer will conduct a more in-depth analysis of the eligibility of the plaintiff and the legality/authenticity/association of the evidence. The nature of the intellectual property rights involved, whether there is a defect in the rights, whether the enterprise is a statutory fair use, whether the amount of compensation claimed by the plaintiff is appropriate, and other legal aspects are carefully analyzed and defended, in order to pursue the best processing results.

【Compliance Summary】

"Everything is forewarned, and nothing is foregone." For enterprises, especially for start-ups or individual self-media/studios, they should have a positive legal awareness, not only pay attention to after-the-fact relief, but also form a good The intellectual property compliance system attaches great importance to prior protection. The compliance of fonts, pictures and office software discussed in this article is only the simplest part of the corporate intellectual property compliance system, and it is the easiest part to solve by "breaking money and eliminating disasters". Large-scale trademarks/patents and other corporate intellectual property compliance disasters can turn into life-and-death disasters for enterprises with a little carelessness. Therefore, it is recommended that enterprises, especially start-up enterprises, take precautions and build an intellectual property firewall with professional compliance legal professionals to ensure the healthy and stable development of enterprises.