論視聽作品的範圍及權利歸屬

2020年修改的《著作權法》第17條用「視聽作品」的名稱取代了「電影作品和以類似攝製電影的方法創作的作品」，並將其分為「電影作品、電視劇作品」和「其他視聽作品」，分別規定了著作權歸屬。前者著作權由製作者享有，後者則由製作者與作者約定。該規定是建立在有關「視聽作品」的範圍大於「電影作品和以類似攝製電影的方法創作的作品」的誤解基礎上的。它導致難以劃分兩類視聽作品，同時「其他視聽作品」的著作權歸屬對於潛在利用者而言將難以確定，因為約定將產生著作權歸製作者、合作作者或其中特定合作作者的複雜可能性。此類視聽作品的交易安全將由此受到損害，交易成本將不可避免地上升。建議將「其他視聽作品」的範圍局限於電子遊戲的連續畫面，同時認定潛在利用者有權信賴此類視聽作品版權標識中標注的人就是權利人，以此減少修改後《著作權法》中視聽作品著作權歸屬規則帶來的負面影響。

"Article 17 in the amended Copyright Law (2020) replaces the concept of ''cinematographic works and works produced by a process analogous to cinematography'' with ''audiovisual works'' and categorizes them as ''cinematographic and TV serial works'' and ''other audiovisual works'', applying different ownership rules. The ownership of the former belongs to the producer, while the latter is decided by the contract between producer and the authors. This provision is based on the false understanding that the scope of ''audiovisual works'' is larger than ''cinematographic works and works produced by a process analogous to cinematography'', and it leads to the extreme difficulty in distinguishing the types of audiovisual works. The ownership of the copyright in ''other audiovisual works'' will be unclear to the potential user since it might belong to the producer, co-authors or one of co-authors according to the contract. The legal safety of the trade of such works will be undermined and the legal cost will rise inevitably. This article suggests that the scope of ''other audiovisual works'' should be reduced to only include the serials of moving images of video games, and the potential users should be entitled to believe that the name appeared in the copyright notice attached to ''other audiovisual works'' indicates the copyright owner. In this way, the negative impact of the copyright ownership rule of audiovisual works in the amended Copyright Law might be reduced."