Olympic mascot designer wins 480,000 yuan compensation off copier
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Olympic mascot designer Han Meilin agreed to 480,000 yuan ($74,064) compensation from a Shanghai art dealer accused of selling signed counterfeit artworks, the Huangpu District People's Court announced on Tuesday.
The accused, who was not fully named, agreed to destroy 52 paintings and 13 sculptures at his store and publicly apologize to Han in a local newspaper, the court announced. All the works to be destroyed bore Han's forged signature.
Han had filed a 700,000 yuan lawsuit in August after being asked to judge whether or not a painting bought at the fake Shanghai store was his own authentic work or a duplicate sold without his permission.
The defendant acknowledged he never had permission to copy and agreed to pay Han 480,000 yuan before June 10. If he fails to pay up, Han can claim 960,000 yuan.
Awareness of intellectual property rights is increasing, said Gao Fuping, a professor at the School of Intellectual Property at the East China University of Political Science and Law.
"Maybe because the market value of the artistic works is high, he got that much compensation which is pretty high compared with the average compensation for intellectual property infringement of academic works," Gao told the Global Times.
Not many deploy the law as a weapon to protect their rights because of the high costs," said You Minjian, a lawyer specializing in intellectual property infringement at the Shanghai Co-effort Law Firm.
"According to the law, the plaintiff has the obligation to show evidence of the amount of his personal losses and the defendant's real illegal gains," he told the Global Times.
"If he can't, the most compensation he can get is 500,000 yuan, often far from sufficient to compensate for the plaintiff's losses and research."
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