Legal Regulation and IP Rights Protection of Online games in China

Abstract

Nowadays, the videogame industry is an ever growing sector, which rivaling both the movie and music ones combined, of which China, along with Germany, USA and Japan is one of the few leaders. This thesis is about the analysis of the state of the videogame industry in the PRC, with special focus on the process of publication of videogames by foreign industries. The dissertation is divided into three chapters, the first one giving an exhaustive presentation about the global history of this sector, from the first attempts in 1970s all the way to 2019. This part of the research shows who are the main companies and what trends are they following, regarding both hardware and software. In the latter part of the chapter, a brief confrontation of how said main countries view this industry from an IP (intellectual property) point of view. In the second one, the core, the author shifts the focus to the PRC, and researches the historic reasons for the current videogame publication regulation, from 2004 to 2018. Aiming to explain phenomenon such as the “console ban” and “licensing freeze” which deeply impacted the local industry. After this introduction the Author follows to analyze the main IP laws in china and their relevance to the videogaming market as well as providing example of how such law impact their economic environment. Finally, in the conclusion, the case study of the Digital Bros company is provided, analyzing the reasons and practices that allowed them successfully enter the Chinese videogame publishing market as well as some prediction for the future evolution of Chinese IP laws in the sector based on the content of the previous chapters .