Tag Archives: Microblog Infringement

Analysis on the Copyright Infringement on Microblog

On 30th December, the Annual Conference of Sohu Weibo Client (weibo is just kind of microbloggng service like twitter in China), 2011 was held in Beijing, and Sohu (NASDAQ: SOHU) first issued the Weibo Copyright Protection Convention among the four main microblogging platforms in China, which verifies that the author may enjoy the copyright over its tweets, and accordingly Sohu will provide protecton on it, respect its authorized use and offer aids in the legal protection. However, for the tweets tend to be brief, therefore its protection by Copyright Law has been long argued. And here is the analysis from Bridge IP Law Commentary on it.

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Could Tweets be Protected by Copyright Law in China?

Some net friends ask lawyers of Bridge IP Law Commentary on the http://www.zhihu.com/ (the Quora in China) that whether the original contents in the microblog could be protected by Copyright Law, and if can, how they are protected. Our replies are as follows:

1. The tweets could be the works as specified in the Copyright Law when they are original, despite they could only contain 140 characters. However, when the tweets only have a single word “Ah!” or the normal phrase like “It’s a fine day today”, then such microblogs could not be the legal works and could not be protected by Copyright Law.

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