On September 11, 2021, the "Implementation of the New Copyright Law and Online Game Copyright Protection" seminar was held in Wuhan, which was hosted by the Intellectual Property Research Center of Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, and carried out in a combination of online and offline methods. Many domestic judges, lawyers, scholars and related experts in the online game industry were invited to participate in this seminar to discuss the implementation of the new Copyright Law and the issue of online game copyright protection. Llinks partner, James Wang, was invited to participate in this seminar.
The seminar discussed three topics in addition to the opening and summary speech, namely "Online game creation and online game rights attribution and ownership issues under the new Copyright Law", "Online game ecological development and copyright protection issues under the new Copyright Law", and "Legal protection of virtual items in online games".
James Wang gave a speech on the topic of "Evaluation of the Legitimacy of the Business Model of the Third-Party Game Item Trading Platform". He pointed out that the online game virtual items can't be the object of real right, but have some nature of creditor's right and copyright. Whether to allow the trading of game items is an independent market choice made by the online game developer, which falls into the realm of online game product design. Furthermore, he explained the phenomenon of the thriving of the professional "Gold Farmer", and the third-party game item trading platforms have spawned a large number of "Gold Famer" studios, which infringes on the interests of online game companies.
