作品名称与角色名称在先商品化权益保护之反思

Reflection on the Protection of Prior Merchandising Rights of Work Names and Character Names

摘要: 在作品名称、作品中的角色名称的保护问题上，我国法院逐渐形成了以其构成商品化权益，进而构成商标法上的在先权利而提供保护的路径。但商品化权益的概念十分复杂，可理解为“形象权”、“角色权”、“促销权”或用作版权合同用语。并且概念的混乱直接影响商品化权益的正当性基础。法院在实践中往往借助“劳动价值论”、“促销论”、“市场混淆论”等理由说明商品化权益的正当性，但这些理论都不具有独立意义，仍与保护著作权相关。商品化权益作为法律尚未承认的新术语，其可能指代可受保护的民事权益，也可能指代不受保护的作品溢出价值。在两类名称经过商业使用行为后，其“商品化权益”之名不影响其可受保护的“民事权益”之实，可在现行法律框架下构成“未注册商标”、“有一定影响的商品名称”等而受保护。

Abstract: In the protection of work names and character names, the Chinese court has gradually formed a way to provide protection by constituting the merchandising rights and then the prior rights in the trademark law. However, the concept of merchandising rights is very complex and can be understood as “rights of publicity”, “rights in characters”, and “promotion rights” or used as terms of copyright contracts. Moreover, the confusion of concepts directly affects the justification basis of merchandising rights. In practice, the court often uses “labor theory of value”, “promotion theory”, “market confusion theory” and other reasons to justify merchandising rights, but these theories do not have independent significance and are still related to the protection of copyright. As a new term not yet recognized by the law, merchandising rights may refer to civil rights that can be protected, or to the spillover value of unprotected works. After the commercial use of the two types of names, the name of “merchandising rights” does not affect the actual “civil rights” that can be protected and can be protected as “unregistered trademarks” and “trade names with certain influence” under the current legal framework.