IPC Court determines no infringement occurrence for copyright infringement lawsuit between two local online game developers

　For the copyright infringement lawsuit filed by Soft-World International Corporation (hereinafter “Soft-World”) against Heluo Games Co., Ltd. (hereinafter “Heluo”) with respect to Heluo’s suspected infringement by its Tale of Wuxia upon Soft-World’s copyright in its Enigma Online, the Intellectual Property and Commercial Court of Taiwan (the IPC Court) rendered a judgment on November 20, 2023 after this case was remanded back to it by the Supreme Court of Taiwan.  According to the IPC Court’s holding provided in the judgment, Soft-World implied consent to Heluo’s subsequent reproduction or adaptation of Soft-World’s copyrighted Enigma Online, and Heluo did not infringe upon Soft-World’s economic rights in Enigma Online either out of intention or by negligence; also, it is groundless for Soft-World to claim that Heluo infringed upon the oral and literary, artistic, and musical works contained in Enigma Online.  In addition, the IPC Court vacated the first-instance judgment with respect to the claims that Heluo and its responsible person, XU Chang-Long should jointly and severally pay TWD24 million in damages to Soft-World and should remove infringement.  In regard to another claim added in the second-instance proceedings that Heluo should run a notice of the gist of the judgment on this case in the front page of the local newspapers for one day, the IPC Court found the claim groundless and dismissed it accordingly.  This case remains appealable.  (Released 2023.12.14) 
/CCS