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17 August 2015Copyright

WIPR Survey: Olympics ‘rip-off’ claim harmful to China, readers say

Accusations that the official song for the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics is a copy of the hit song “Let it Go” from the Disney film “Frozen” will cement the opinion that China has a bad reputation for honouring intellectual property, readers have claimed.

For our most recent survey we asked whether the publicity surrounding the song will harm China’s IP reputation with 84% of respondents agreeing that it would.

Last week, WIPR reported that YouTube had removed the song called “The Ice and Snow Dance” due to “multiple third-party” complaints of copyright infringement.

Beijing was chosen as the host city for the 2022 games in July. The disputed song is one of ten chosen by the Chinese Olympic Committee to represent the games.

But once the song was uploaded to YouTube it received a frosty response after the site’s users noticed similarities with Disney’s 2013 track and claimed it was a “rip off”.

Criticisms ranged from China’s inability to “make anything original” to a throw away remark that “the cold never bothered you [China] anyway” (a reference to a line in "Let it Go").

But the flurry of accusations have done no good for the country’s IP reputation, WIPR readers said.

One respondent said: “In the general public’s opinion, it cements the common opinion of China ripping off foreign ideas.”

But others said China’s IP reputation was already impossible to salvage.

“They already have a bad reputation and are a nation discredited from allowing manufacturers to rip off company owned trademarks ... this is par for the course,” argued one respondent.

Another added that China’s reputation “was destroyed years ago.”

For this week’s survey, WIPR asks: “The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled last week that the International Trade Commission can halt the importation of goods it believes may induce patent infringement once they enter the US border. Was this the correct decision?”

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More on this story

Copyright
6 August 2015   YouTube has removed an official song for the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics due to “multiple third-party” complaints of copyright infringement.
Trademarks
19 August 2021   The Chinese Olympic Committee has pledged to protect Chinese Olympic champions against the unauthorised use of their names as trademarks.