CHINA Trends and Developments Contributed by: Qiang Ma, Jingtian & Gongcheng
bolster preservation and enforcement measures to better protect the rights and interests of trade mark owners. Simplified formality requirements for court appeals The implementation of the Apostille Convention has greatly simplified formality requirements for court appeals and relieved burdens on for - eign plaintiffs. Previously, to meet the formality requirements, foreign plaintiffs needed to sub - mit notarised and legalised formality documents within three months of the initial filing of court appeals. The documents needed to go through multiple-level notarisation and embassy/consu - lar legalisation, which was time-consuming and costly. However, following the implementation of the Apostille Convention, which was officially imple - mented in China on 7 November 2023, the for - eign plaintiffs in the contracting jurisdiction can skip embassy/consular legalisation and use Apostille legalisation instead. This will greatly reduce the turnaround time for finalising the for - mality documents. In addition, it has also made it simpler for for - eign plaintiffs to prove the signatory power. Pre - viously, the evidence chain had to be complete and the authorisation had to be clear and spe - cific. These strict requirements led to many court appeals being rejected. The revised Guideline issued by the Beijing IP Court has made it much easier. For example, the court allows a US plain - tiff to use local Corporation Acts with a general provision on management power of the officers within the company as prima facie, evidence of the signatory power. The simplification of the process reduces the burden of proof on the for - eign plaintiff, allowing more cases to proceed to substantive examination and ensuring that the
plaintiff’s litigation rights are better enforced and protected. Copyright In the last two years (2023-2024), the courts have handled or are currently handling several copyright cases related to generative AI, ranging from the copyrightability of AI-generated con - tent, to infringement arising from AI model train - ing and liability for AI-generated outputs. Copyright protection of AI-generated content In 2023 and 2024, two courts respectively ruled that AI-generated content was eligible for copy - right protection and the user owned the work. The key details of the two cases are as follows. • Case 1 (ruling issued by the Beijing Internet Court in November 2023). The plaintiff used Stable Diffusion to generate the disputed image by inputting prompts and adjusting parameters. The Court determined that the plaintiff’s design and selection of prompts and parameters demonstrated their person - alised selection and arrangement. The image created by the plaintiff therefore met the originality requirement and was eligible for copyright protection. The Court further held that AI did not have legal personality and that the developers of the AI model neither had the intent to create nor actively participated in the creation process. Therefore, the user was considered the author and the rights holder. • Case 2 (ruling issued by the Changshu Pri - mary People’s Court in October 2024). The plaintiff first used Midjourney to generate the image by inputting prompts, then alter - nated between Photoshop and Midjourney to modify the image before finally obtaining the disputed image. The Court examined the originality based on the elements, colours and other aspects of the image and deter -
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