The legitimacy of reverting digital "intellectual achievements" protection to copyright law——Background on the path selection for protecting AI-generated content
Xu Rongling
Law School, Shanghai University
Abstract： At present, a plethora of digital "intellectual achievements" continue to emerge, but the legitimacy of copyright protection has been challenged as never before. Taking AI-generated content as an example, both in the object of protection, the subject of rights, and the controlled behavior, there are difficulties in identifying because of the strong involvement of technology, which leads to the tendency of applying anti-unfair competition law for protection. However, the application of anti-unfair competition law not only fails to achieve the desired effect, but also increases social costs due to the conflict with copyright law. After further analysis, it can be found that there are misunderstandings about the creation mode, technical identity, and the nature of use behavior on digital "intellectual achievements" such as AI-generated content. When the relevant misunderstandings are corrected, copyright law is fully capable of providing adequate protection for digital "intellectual achievements" and achieving a balance between the interests of authors and the public interest. Therefore, the correct approach is to clearly define the boundaries of copyright law, anti-unfair competition law and public domain externally, and to find a protection mode suitable for digital "intellectual achievements" internally by using the efficient interest balance mechanism of copyright law.
