侵害境外作品著作權糾紛案件中權屬的認定—《托馬斯&朋友》音像製品著作權糾紛案評析

Identifying the Ownership in the Foreign Copyright Disputes: the Case of Thomas & Friends

著作權權屬的認定是人民法院審理著作權糾紛案件的邏輯起點，也是人民法院判決的重要依據。原告的舉證充分與否對權屬的認定起著決定性作用。《最高人民法院關於民事訴訟證據的若干規定》對域外證據的形式要件作出了明確規定，當原告所舉之證不能滿足域外證據的形式要件時，人民法院是嚴格地以此為由駁回原告訴訟請求，還是結合其他證據綜合認定著作權權利歸屬；行政審批材料能否成為進口音像製品權屬認定中的直接證據；如何評價非法出版物銷售商的銷售行為，這些問題都涉及法官對不同法益與法律價值之間的平衡與取舍，對當事人的權利、義務合理性配置具有指導意義。

The identification of copyright ownership is not only the logical starting point of copyright dispute cases, but also the important basis for the Court’s judgments. Whether the plaintiff put an adequate proof or not plays a decisive role in the identification of copyright ownership. Some provisions of the Supreme People’s Court on Evidence in Civil Procedures has explicitly pointed out the formality of extraterritorial evidence. When the plaintiff’s proof cannot meet the requirements of the formality of extraterritorial evidence, whether a people’s Court should choose to strictly deny the plaintiff’s claim or comprehensively identify the copyright ownership based on other complementary evidences, whether some administrative approval documents could be regarded as a direct evidence for indentifying the ownership of import audio-visual products or not, and how to evaluate the sellers of illicit publications? All these issues are related to the balance and tradeoff among several legal interests and legal values made by Judge, which have instructive significance for the rational allocation on the rights and obligations of the litigants.