On September 10, 2025, the Beijing Internet Court released eight Typical Cases Involving Artificial Intelligence (涉人工智能典型案例) “to better serve and safeguard the healthy and orderly development of the artificial intelligence industry.” Typical cases in China serve as educational examples, unify legal interpretation, and guide lower courts and the general public. While not legally binding precedents like those in common law systems, these cases provide authoritative guidance in a civil law system where codified statutes are the primary source of law. …
Category: Right of Publicity
China’s Supreme People’s Court Designates Generative AI Case as Typical
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 …
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 …