The Decision on Amending the Copyright Law of the People's Republic of China (the "Decision"), which was adopted at the 23_rd Session of the Standing Committee of the 13_th National People's Congress ("NPC") recently, will come into force as of June 1, 2021.

In accordance with the Decision, the amended Copyright Law has improved the provisions on the protection for cyberspace copyright, greatly raised the upper limit amount of statutory compensation for infringement and defined the principles of punitive compensation. Particularly, if the circumstance of intentional infringement is serious, punitive compensation in an amount between one time and five times the compensation amount may be claimed. If it is difficult to calculate the actual losses of the right holder, the illegal gains of the infringing party or the royalties, the court will rule to grant compensation in an amount between CNY500 and CNY5,000,000 as per actual circumstances of the infringement. As is clearly specified in the Decision, the amended Copyright Law adjusts the definition of "work", and amends "a cinematographic work or a work created by a process analogous to cinematography" under the prevailing law into "an audiovisual work". The amended Copyright Law also intensifies law enforcement means of regulatory departments and so on.

(Source: www.npc.gov.cn)