On May 26, 2025, China’s Supreme People’s Court (SPC) released the “Typical cases on the fifth anniversary of the promulgation of the Civil Code” (民法典颁布五周年典型案例) including one generative AI case in which the Beijing Internet Court held that an AI-generated voice infringed a dubber’s personality rights. Note that while China is not a common law country, designating a case as a Guiding Case or Typical Case is somewhat analogous to a U.S. Court marking a case as precedential in that …
Category: Right of Publicity
China’s Beijing Internet Court Recognizes Personality Rights in Generative AI Case
In an announcement dated April 23, 2024, the Beijing Internet Court of China ruled against a defendant that used a dubber’s voice to train a generative AI. Specifically, the Court held that the defendant use of dubber’s voice to train an AI voice generator infringed the dubber’s personality rights due to similarity of the voice generator output to the dubber’s voice. This same Court earlier held there is copyright in AI-generated images.
China Releases Typical Cases of Judicial Protection of Personality Rights
On April 11, 2022, China’s Supreme People’s Court (SPC) released the Typical civil cases of judicial protection of personality rights after the promulgation of the Civil Code (民法典颁布后人格权司法保护典型民事案例). Although China is not a common law jurisdiction, the SPC often releases typical or guiding cases to assist trial courts in rendering decisions. The typical cases list 9, of which 3 may be of interest to foreign IP practitioners. Breach of personality rights, like unfair competition, can be a useful cause of …
China’s New Civil Law Adds Right of Publicity
The Third Session of the 13th National People’s Congress (NPC) voted and passed the “Civil Code of the People’s Republic of China” on May 28, 2020. This law will come into effect on January 1, 2021. Part IV of the law is dedicated to Personality Rights, which include portrait rights, which is similar California’s right of publicity and right of publicity for the deceased. Portrait rights in China were previously protected under the General Principles of Civil Law and the new law provides significant …