Popular panda exhibit in the eye of storm over copyright violation
Print Edition
THE World Wildlife Fund is suggesting there could be a copyright violation over an ongoing panda exhibit in downtown Shanghai.
The local display, titled “1st panda” at Jing An Kerry Centre, features 100 pandas made of leftover moso bamboos and has been a big hit with locals as well as tourists since it was unveiled on Monday.
However, in a statement WWF said the Fund and French artist Paulo Grangeon own the worldwide copyrights of a very similar exhibition, “1600 Paper Pandas Exhibition.” WWF said AllRightsReserved Ltd is the only authorized exhibition organizer in China.
Responding to a query, the WWF said on its Weibo account that “any unauthorized exhibition is a willful infringement of the tripartite copyright.”
Although the WWF did not specifically mention the Shanghai exhibit, it said “it reserves the right to take legal action against unauthorized exhibition.”
But the organizer of the Shanghai exhibit has maintained they were original works. “We have used different materials, they are our own designs and have registered with China’s brand authority,” said a press officer with the Shanghai-based Dingyida Co.
She said the pandas are the first of a series of exhibition on various animals. “The exhibition in Shanghai has nothing to do with the paper panda exhibition in Paris and Berlin. It has its own independent brand copyright,” Dingyida said.
An official with the WWF China declined to comment on the matter but said it was yet to contact the organizer of the Shanghai exhibition.
Non-profit exhibition
Dingyida said the two exhibitions were different in terms of innovation, theme, design and manufacturing.
The “1st panda” was a non-profit exhibition with the theme of environmental protection.
The exhibition in Shanghai, which ends on Sunday, will then travel to 30 other cities in China, the company said.
On the other hand, the “1600 Paper Pandas Exhibition” was jointly launched by Grangeon and WWF in 2008 and aims to promote conservation of wild pandas and their habitat, and as a symbol of harmonious existence between humans and nature.
The paper pandas are handmade from recycled paper in different sizes and displayed in landmark buildings and sites around the world.
“It will be a copyright violation only if the pandas in Shanghai are copies of the image of the pandas in the WWF exhibition,” said You Yunting, a lawyer and an intellectual property rights expert. “I find no apparent copies of the image. Even if some pandas have the same images, the organizers can change them rather than suspend the whole exhibition,” You said.
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