Case brief:

In December 2020, the law enforcement team of the Shanghai Culture and Tourism Bureau inspected Shanghai Zeji Education Training Co Ltd. Infringing publications such as the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants or AACA workbook Foundations in Accountancy/ACCA Financial Accounting (FFA/FA) (ISBN 9781 5097 2991 3) were found and seized on site.

The investigation found that, without the permission of the copyright owner, Zeji Education purchased the online e-reading files of the above books via the official website of BPP Learning Media Ltd, namely the BPP Publishing Group in the UK.

It then took screen shots to save the picture of 10 kinds of ACCA exercise books. After entrusting Shanghai Feicai Graphic Design Co Ltd to print them, Zeji Education provided the reprints to the students and teachers of its offline ACCA training classes which were set up for profit.

The act of Zeji Education was found to have infringed upon the right of reproduction enjoyed by the copyright owner and damaged the order of the normal market, thus constituting an infringement of the reproduction of the copyright owner's work without permission. The law enforcement team ordered the company to stop the infringing act, confiscated 107 infringing publications and imposed a fine of 70,000 yuan ($10,419).

Significance:

The case effectively cracked down on acts infringing the copyright of others and is seen as being of great value to the rectification of the chaotic education training industry – with the convenient use of the internet, training materials are easily plagiarized and copied without the permission of the rights holders.

The handling of the case also demonstrated the positive, active and just attitude of China's administrative law enforcement organs in granting equal protection to the works of overseas copyright owners.