China Uses Blockchain Technology as Evidence for Copyright Infringement

China’s Internet Courts are making sincere efforts to step up their use and implementation of blockchain technology for protecting and safeguarding the unique creations of the creative content writers and creators. The step has primarily been beneficial to the authors and writers who publish their works online, including the social media platforms, and face severe issues in safeguarding their legal rights or Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) and difficulty in collecting evidence against the infringers.

Blockchain is indeed solving the evidentiary issues related to Copyright Infringement for the content writers and creators in Hangzhou, which is the capital of Zhejiang Province in East China. All the writers have to do is upload their articles, blog posts, or other literary works on a blockchain-based database, which shall automatically generate an electronic ID for the specific piece of content. Wang Jiangqiao, the executive vice president of the Hangzhou Internet Court, stated that the blockchain technology also stores the other related information about the content writer, including his or her location, time, and identity. As cryptography protects and safeguards the data and relevant information on the blockchain, it has become relatively convenient for the copyright owners to protect their works from unauthorized use and the issues of piracy. Now, a reasonable proportion of Chinese articles posted or published on the Internet consist of a marker, which signifies the fact that they are well-protected by blockchain.

Hangzhou’s Internet Court is one of the three courts in China committed to dealing with the issues and disputes corresponding to online contracts, e-commerce, and internet copyright infringements. In 2018, the Hangzhou Internet Court adopted and implemented a blockchain platform for evidence. The content writer and creators can claim their IP Rights quite easily with a digital ID of their literary works on the blockchain. While facing any infringement issue or dispute, they can go ahead with handing over the blockchain data as proof to the judiciary. Up till now, the copyright owners were supposed to pay an extremely high price for safeguarding their rights, which involved other aspects like notarization and filing a lawsuit. Even if they got compensation, it would have never been enough to cover the expense of the traditional IPR claim process. The same is also apart from the lost income resulting from someone stealing your proprietary work.

It is a matter of fact that yes – the Internet is indeed a virtual world where it is exceedingly possible to modify or use data, due to which, it has become increasingly complex to prove the authenticity of the data. Gao Fuping, the dean of the School of Intellectual Property (IP) at one of the universities in East China, said that as the data on the blockchain is traceable, tamper-proof, and verifiable, it provides the evidence for handling IPR disputes on the Internet.

The Internet Courts in Guangzhou, Beijing, and Hangzhou have all launched the judicial applications of the blockchain technology. Since its establishment, the judicial blockchain of the court at Hangzhou has collected 2.1 billion pieces of data. At the beginning of November 2019, a court in Shaoxing gave the first-ever criminal sentence in China based on the evidence stored on the blockchain.