Intellectual Property Rights And The Online Gaming Business

ECONOMY Intellectual Property Rights and the Online Gaming Business in China May 25, 2015 The New York Times Economic Scene Editor Anna Wu Abstract Online gaming as one of the largest and fastest growing Internet business in the world, are developing in the peak period in China (Kshetri, N. 2009). According to China Gaming Market 2014-2018 Forecast and Analysis (IDC) China, In 2013, RMB83.17 billion in revenues were generated by China s gaming market, including online PC games, single player PC games, and mobile games. It claims that an annual growth rate of 23.5% in this period of the revenue of China s gaming market can be expected. However, the intellectual property rights especially the copyright presents online gaming business a†¦show more content†¦According to the speech by Thomas Yih (2010), the assistant president and general counsel, Shanda Games Limited, the developing scale of online gaming in China could be described by numbers, including the number of the broadband users exceeded the entire population of America and the complex annual growth rate of China s internet users was 36 percent from 2005 to 2009. By the end of this period, the number of online game players in China reached 296 million, occupying more than two thirds of the total internet user in the nation. Not only Shanda Games Limited noticed the big opportunity, but also many commercial subjects has been attracted by its predictable business outlook. Therefore, severe conflicts related to copyright infringement between different companies during the competition convey the significance of protecting copyright in China. Legend of Mir II is a massive multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) which originally produced by Actoz Soft Co. Ltd. in Korea was published by Shanda Games Limited and was commercially launched in November, 2001. The number of the occurrent players for Legend of Mir II exceeded six million in October of 2002, became the most welcomed online game in 2002 and 2003 in China (Jiang, 2008). This MMORPG as an honor leader of Shanda Interactive Entertainment Ltd, generates stunning monthly profits accounting for RMB1.4 billion yuan. However, since the end of year 2011 Shanda Games Limited found a