The App Store, a new digital content sharing model initiated by Apple Company in 2008, provides downloading services of various kinds of applications including e-books and games, some of which are clearly priced and some are for free.
Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, once said: "Since the establishment of Apple, I have started to realize that chances of our success prominently rely on the protection and development of our intellectual property rights. If anyone was capable of copying and stealing our software at will, Apple would be close to bankruptcy."
As a company who takes priority to its intellectual property development and protection, Apple deliberately ignores the uploading of pirated contents into its App Store, which could be easily explained by the fact that Apple and those illegal file-sharing consumers reach an agreement on a profit-split model that enables Apple reap a big profit without any cost. In stark contrast, copyright owners have to face huge losses due to those violations.
Someone believes that the reason why Apple does not take any action towards the illegal contents in its App Store is that the “Safe Harbor” principle in relevant domestic laws may apply to the sharing activities, which provides an exemption for sharing activities by information storage spaces and searching links instead of digital malls. The App Store, as a digital mall, is actually not protected by the principle. Although App Store is considered to be an information storage space, it still violates the rules of the “Safe Harbor” principle which forbids direct profitable gains from the shared contents. Law industry insiders comment that on one hand, Apple, as the operator of the App Store, bears the responsibility to censor the copyrights of contents in sale; on the other hand, the App Store should shoulder more responsibilities of censorship as it takes a certain proportion of profit which is gained by file sharing.
Currently, Apple addresses copyright issues by adopting a reporting mechanism, which defines that Apple will rectify or remove the alleged stolen contents after a close scrutiny of IP documents submitted by content owners. However, as the “Safe Harbor” principle is not applied to the App Store case, the “deletion after notice” model stipulated in the “Safe Harbor” principle is not applied here as well. In another word, despite Apple implements its reporting mechanism to curb piracy, it still has to face the challenge by laws for its joint infringing activities.
It is likely to see that cases against violators such as Apple are always time-consuming and arduous; particularly those which involve foreign entities are required to be handled in an extremely strict manner in onus probandi and judicial procedures. Although it makes little sense for content owners without the support of competent copyright agents to spend valuable time in filing lawsuits instead of creating, the cases against Apple will undoubtedly help increase the copyright protection awareness of Chinese cultural works in international market, and will also urge similar application stores to set up a threshold of copyright authentification to ensure a sound business development.
(Source: IPR in China)
