Key Focus
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The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) jointly issued the Implementation Opinions on the Regulated Application and Innovative Development of Intelligent Agents — requiring the improvement of policies, regulations and ethical norms, preventing intelligent agents from using data advantages and anthropomorphic technologies to disseminate undesirable values or engage in algorithmic exploitation, and preventing risks such as addiction and emotional dependence among minors and the elderly.
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The Office of the Central Cyberspace Affairs Commission comprehensively deployed and advanced the work of regulating short video content labelling — requiring websites and platforms to provide users with six “mandatory labels” such as “contains fictional/interpretive content” and “contains AI-generated content,” and to make content labelling a mandatory step in the publication of short videos.
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The Beijing Intellectual Property Court concluded a case concerning infringement of the right of communication through information networks in relation to the simultaneous dissemination of sports event programs via GIFs — holding that users’ dissemination of single frames or continuous frames of the sports event program at issue would have a substitutive effect on the event program video and does not constitute fair use; where a platform fails to promptly take down infringing content after receiving a notice of infringement, it shall bear joint and several liability for the portion of damages arising from the expansion of the infringement.
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The Huangpu District People’s Court of Guangzhou concluded the first criminal case nationwide in which the illicit recording of AI-generated short dramas was found to constitute the crime of copyright infringement — clarifying that the proportion of human intellectual input is the core criterion for determining whether an AI short drama is copyrightable; in this case, the criminal suspects illicitly recorded 1,716 videos, which has reached the threshold for criminal prosecution.
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The Guangzhou Internet Court concluded a defamation dispute arising from the “doxxing” of the “person behind” a virtual idol — holding that where a stable correspondence has been formed between a virtual idol and its “person behind” such that the general public is able to associate the two, acts of insult directed at the virtual idol are in substance directed at the real-life performer behind it and constitute infringement of the right of reputation of the real-life performer.
News
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The Council of Chairpersons of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress adopted the 2026 Legislative Work Plan of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress: the Trademark Law will continue to be deliberated; legislative projects concerning the governance of online bullying and the sound development of artificial intelligence are scheduled for preliminary deliberation.
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The General Office of the State Council issued the 2026 Legislative Work Plan of the State Council: it plans to revise the Administrative Measures for Internet Information Services and to preliminarily revise the Regulations for the Implementation of the Copyright Law; it requires the improvement of artificial intelligence governance and the acceleration of comprehensive legislation for the sound development of artificial intelligence.
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The State Administration for Market Regulation approved, with restrictive conditions, Tencent’s acquisition of equity in Ximalaya: the transaction may have the effect of eliminating or restricting competition in the markets for online audio streaming platforms and online music streaming platforms within China; Tencent, Ximalaya and the post-concentration entity are required to make five restrictive commitments, including “not to enter into exclusive licensing arrangements with copyright owners of online audio streaming platforms, and to terminate existing exclusive licensing arrangements within a prescribed period.”
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The National Copyright Administration issued a special copyright edition for the 2026 National Intellectual Property Publicity Week: it covers four major sections, namely the sports industry, film and television entertainment, traditional culture and emerging fields; copyright infringement of sports events is characterized by concealed forms, diverse means and complex dissemination chains.
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The 2026 World Cultural and Tourism Industry Expo and IP Industry Cooperation Fair opened in Guangzhou: it covers the entire copyright industry chain including literature, film and television, animation, e-sports and digital collectibles, and builds carriers for copyright protection, transaction matchmaking, ecosystem co-construction and commercial operation, thereby promoting in-depth integration and alignment between international IP and domestic manufacturing industries.
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Frequent occurrences of infringing “face-swapping” in AI short dramas: the relevant infringing acts are characterized by large volume, high frequency, strong concealment and rapid dissemination; the targets of infringement have expanded from celebrities and entertainers to ordinary individuals, and short drama producers purchase portrait rights of ordinary individuals in bulk at prices ranging from RMB 100 to 1,500 for the generation of AI characters.
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The Short Drama Copyright Center of Douyin Group held the first Short Drama Industry Conference in Changsha, Hunan: the average daily consumption time of live-action short dramas has nearly tripled within one year; more than 1,100 live-action short dramas have exceeded 1 billion views across the entire internet; the number of content categories has expanded from 44 last year to 65; the proportion of consumption time for series has risen from 6% to 15%; Douyin’s guaranteed support budget for live-action short dramas in 2026 exceeds RMB 1.5 billion. Date: 12 May 2026.
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Tencent Music announced its results for the first quarter of 2026: total revenue was RMB 7.90 billion, an increase of 7.3% year-on-year, of which revenue from music-related non-subscription services was RMB 1.94 billion, representing a year-on-year increase of 28.0%; the company’s adjusted net profit was RMB 2.33 billion, an increase of 4.8% year-on-year.
Cases
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The Shanghai Intellectual Property Court concluded a case concerning commercial disparagement involving miHoYo, clarifying that the so-called “skin suit theory” is a new type of online rumor that causes “disruptive harm” to the industry; the two defendants’ acts of leveraging “black traffic” to promote goods for profit constituted commercial disparagement, and the court ordered them to compensate miHoYo in the total amount of RMB 430,000.
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The Fourth Intermediate People’s Court of Beijing concluded a dispute over infringement of the right of reputation arising from insinuating and disparaging remarks made through Weibo posts and the setting of a “no-circle-limit lottery”: where the characteristic elements of the target in insinuating remarks are sufficient to enable the audience to realize that such remarks have a high degree of correspondence with a specific target, thereby causing a reduction in the social evaluation of that specific target, such acts still constitute infringement of the right of reputation.
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The Yantian District People’s Court of Shenzhen concluded a dispute over a copyright license use contract: it clarified that after the term of a game licensing agreement expires, the licensee has no right to request the court to compel the right holder to extend the licensing term.
Key Focus
The CAC, NDRC and MIIT Jointly Issued the Implementation Opinions on the Regulated Application and Innovative Development of Intelligent Agents
The Implementation Opinions are formulated pursuant to the Opinions of the State Council on Deeply Implementing the “AI Plus” Initiative, with the aim of clarifying the development orientation and governance framework for intelligent agents. The core contents relating to the prevention of security risks and the compliance governance system include:
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With respect to product principles and decision-making authority, the Implementation Opinions require that the behavior of intelligent agents be in compliance with laws and regulations and mainstream values, preventing the use of data advantages or anthropomorphic technologies to disseminate harmful content or engage in algorithmic exploitation; preventing risks of addiction or emotional dependence among minors and the elderly; clarifying the boundaries of authority in the three scenarios of “user autonomous decision-making,” “authorized decision-making” and “intelligent agent autonomous decision-making,” ensuring users’ right to know and ultimate control over autonomous decision-making by intelligent agents, and that operations performed shall not exceed the scope of authorization; at the same time, establishing mechanisms to ensure that the behavior of intelligent agents in important application scenarios is verifiable and traceable, so as to prevent major risks arising from improper behavior of intelligent agents.
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With respect to the prevention of security risks, the Implementation Opinions specify that the security assurance capabilities of intelligent agent systems shall be enhanced, preventing security risks such as data poisoning and privacy leakage, algorithm tampering, system vulnerabilities and loss of operational control, and improving mechanisms for the normalized identification, early warning and intervention of risks associated with intelligent agents, strengthening risk response capabilities such as human-machine collaborative review and interception/blocking; at the same time, avoiding the use of intelligent agents for automated attacks, invasion of privacy, generation and dissemination of false information, online fraud and other illegal and criminal activities.
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With respect to improving the governance system, the Implementation Opinions require the establishment of a classified and tiered governance framework, namely, for sensitive fields and key industries (such as healthcare, finance and public security), the open scenarios shall be determined by the cyberspace administration in conjunction with the competent authorities, and mandatory measures such as record-filing administration, security testing and recall of problematic products shall be implemented; for low-risk scenarios (such as daily life entertainment and routine office work), flexible governance approaches such as improving evaluation and testing tools, promoting self-testing for compliance, information reporting, distribution platform management and industry self-regulation shall be adopted to balance innovation efficiency with regulatory bottom lines.
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With respect to industry self-regulation, the Implementation Opinions require guiding industry organizations and leading enterprises to formulate self-regulatory rules, clarifying practical rules on functional compliance of intelligent agents, algorithm governance and intellectual property protection, and at the same time guiding intelligent agent development platforms, distribution platforms and service providers to establish fair and reasonable platform rules, user service agreements and privacy policies.
Source: China Cyberspace
The Office of the Central Cyberspace Affairs Commission Comprehensively Deployed and Advanced the Work of Regulating Short Video Content Labelling
Since 2026, the Office of the Central Cyberspace Affairs Commission has continuously advanced the work of regulating short video content labelling and strengthened the governance of the short video content ecosystem. From January to date, it has guided websites and platforms to thoroughly remove more than 520,000 non-compliant short videos such as staged fake content, and severely penalize more than 68,000 non-compliant accounts, issued 54 governance announcements, and publicly exposed typical cases; in March, it selected 12 platforms, including Douyin, Kuaishou, Tencent, Xiaohongshu, Bilibili, Weibo, Taobao, JD.com, Pinduoduo, Alipay, Meituan and Baidu, to take the lead in pilot implementation, guiding them to improve their content labelling systems and optimize and test functions related to content labelling.
Based on the pilot results of the above 12 platforms, the Office of the Central Cyberspace Affairs Commission further guided websites and platforms nationwide to implement the following three tasks regarding short video content labelling:
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Standardizing short video content labelling tags and clarifying that websites and platforms must provide users with six types of “mandatory labels”, while being allowed to add “optional labels” based on their own circumstances. Specifically, the “mandatory labels” include “contains fictional/interpretive content,” “contains AI-generated content,” “contains marketing information,” “content is a repost,” “content is a personal opinion,” and “no labelling required.” Short videos that are true-life records may select the “no labelling required” tag, which will not be displayed on the short video page.
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Setting content labelling as a mandatory step in the publication of short videos, whereby publishers must select one item from the “mandatory labels” and may publish the short video only after completing the labelling.
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Strengthening the review of labelling for newly added short videos, and conducting batch retrospective checks on existing short videos; for content that has not been properly labelled, supplementary labelling or correction shall be carried out, and the relevant publishers shall be educated and warned, so as to promote the achievement of full and proper labelling of short video content.
Source: Office of the Central Cyberspace Affairs Commission
The Beijing Intellectual Property Court Concluded a Case Concerning Infringement of the Right of Communication through Information Networks in Relation to the Simultaneous Dissemination of Sports Event Programs via GIFs
The plaintiff, a company under the CCTV system, obtained, by authorization, the exclusive right of communication through information networks for the sports event programs of the Hangzhou Asian Games and was entitled to enforce such rights. The defendant, Ao Company, was the operator of the two accounts involved in the case. The defendant, Meng Company, was the operator of the online platform involved in the case. The CCTV-affiliated company alleged before the court of first instance that during the Hangzhou Asian Games, Ao Company, without permission, intercepted and recorded images of sports event programs and disseminated them via GIFs and short videos through the online accounts it operated, thereby infringing its right of communication through information networks in respect of the sports event programs at issue; after receiving an infringement complaint notice from the CCTV-affiliated company, Meng Company failed to promptly remove the infringing content at issue, thereby aggravating the losses suffered by the CCTV-affiliated company and constituting contributory infringement.
The court of first instance found that Ao Company had infringed the CCTV-affiliated company’s right of communication through information networks in respect of the sports event programs at issue and thus constituted infringement. It also found that Meng Company, after receiving the litigation materials, promptly verified and removed the infringing content at issue, thereby fulfilling its obligation to delete upon notice, and that it had not engaged in acts such as recommending or curating infringing content in the accounts at issue that would constitute contributory infringement; therefore, it did not constitute contributory infringement. The court of first instance ordered Ao Company to compensate the CCTV-affiliated company for economic losses of RMB 200,000 and reasonable expenses of RMB 5,052. Both the CCTV-affiliated company and Ao Company were dissatisfied with the first-instance judgment and appealed.
The Beijing Intellectual Property Court held on appeal that Ao Company directly disseminated single frames or continuous frames of the sports event programs at issue, and such acts do not comply with the provisions on “appropriate quotation” under fair use. The public can obtain part of the content of the sports event programs at issue through the GIFs involved in the case and watch part of the exciting content of the events, which has a substitutive effect on the event program videos and unreasonably harms the legitimate rights and interests of the CCTV-affiliated company. Therefore, Ao Company’s acts at issue do not fall within fair use and infringe the CCTV-affiliated company’s right of communication through information networks in respect of the sports event programs at issue, and it shall bear corresponding liability for infringement.
With respect to whether Meng Company took necessary measures in a timely manner, the Beijing Intellectual Property Court held that, as special works with high visibility and high public attention, infringing dissemination of Hangzhou Asian Games event programs causes damage that spreads instantaneously, making it more necessary and urgent for network service providers to take measures. After discovering the infringing acts at issue, the CCTV-affiliated company promptly sent infringement notices to Meng Company via email and the online platform, but after receiving the infringement notices, Meng Company took basically more than two days, and up to 11 days at the longest, to take down the content. In light of the fact that the entire schedule of the Hangzhou Asian Games lasted only 20 days, Meng Company’s conduct constituted a seriously delayed response, and the continued presence of the infringing content inevitably led to an expanded scope of dissemination. Meng Company, having been aware of the infringement after receiving the notices, failed to take measures in a timely manner, thereby constituting contributory infringement in respect of Ao Company’s infringing acts, and it shall bear joint and several liability with Ao Company for the portion of damages arising from the expansion of the infringement. In summary, the Beijing Intellectual Property Court revised the judgment and held that Meng Company shall bear joint and several liability with Ao Company for RMB 100,000 within the scope of compensation payable by Ao Company to the CCTV-affiliated company, and dismissed Ao Company’s appeal.
Source: IP Beijing
The Huangpu District People’s Court of Guangzhou Concluded the First Criminal Case Nationwide in Which the Illicit Recording of AI-Generated Short Dramas Was Found to Constitute the Crime of Copyright Infringement
Image source: CCTV News
A certain company independently developed a game software and an intelligent video generation tool, through which creators can, by inputting text scripts, selecting materials and setting parameters such as camera shots, autonomously generate AI short drama videos. According to the agreement, the generated short videos are jointly owned in copyright by the users and the company, and the corresponding short drama videos may only be uploaded under the users’ names to the company’s official mini-programs on platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou for paid viewing by audiences.
The defendants, Qin and Sha, without the permission of the copyright owner, used short video platform programs or screen recording software to illegally record and copy the above content and stored it in cloud drives, and publicly sold it for profit on multiple online platforms by sharing links after receiving payment. Forensic examination showed that there were at least 1,716 short drama videos in the cloud drives of Qin and Sha that were identical to the short drama videos of the right holder company on the relevant platforms. From February 2024 to the time of the case, they sold and shared links approximately 200 times, with illegal gains of more than RMB 2,300. In March 2026, the procuratorate instituted a public prosecution against Qin and Sha in accordance with the law.
The Huangpu District People’s Court of Guangzhou held that, in the process of creating the short drama videos, users made personalized choices, arrangements and designs, and carried out comprehensive and complete conception and planning of the overall expression of the short drama videos; the generated short drama videos are the intellectual achievements of the users, who engaged in “strongly guided” creation, and possess originality, and therefore should be recognized as audiovisual works and protected accordingly. Qin and Sha, for the purpose of making profits, reproduced and disseminated, without permission, works in which others enjoyed copyright, in a quantity of 1,716, which constitutes “other serious circumstances” as provided in Article 13 of the Interpretation of the Supreme People’s Court and the Supreme People’s Procuratorate on Several Issues Concerning the Application of Law in the Handling of Criminal Cases of Infringement of Intellectual Property Rights. The court ultimately found Qin and Sha guilty of the crime of copyright infringement, and sentenced each of them to eight months’ fixed-term imprisonment, with a one-year-and-two-month suspension, and imposed fines of RMB 6,000 and RMB 3,000 respectively.
Source: Guangzhou Intermediate People’s Court, Procuratorial Daily
The Guangzhou Internet Court Concluded a Defamation Dispute Arising from the “Doxxing” of the “Person Behind” a Virtual Idol
The plaintiff, Chen (female), is the “person behind” (real-life performer) of “X Bao,” a virtual member of a girl group, and performs facial and motion capture and voice acting for “X Bao.” Through years of continuous performance by Chen, “X Bao” has gained a certain degree of public recognition. In October 2024, Chen was “doxxed,” and her personal identity information and a Weibo account she had used before her debut, which had already been cancelled, were illegally obtained and disclosed by some netizens, and the relevant Weibo content triggered online controversy. In response to the public opinion incident, Chen conducted a live-streamed response in the identity of “X Bao.”
On the day following the live stream, the defendant, Li, using a Weibo account with more than 500,000 followers, posted insulting remarks such as “since ancient times, those who rely on selling ‘sex appeal’ or sacrificing sexual opportunities,” “eunuchs and prostitutes are like this,” and “these skin-suit people, welfare ji,” and attached screenshots of “X Bao’s” live-streaming images, receiving 9,565 likes, 675 comments and 274 reposts. Chen believed that Li’s Weibo remarks constituted an infringement of her right of reputation and therefore filed a lawsuit with the Guangzhou Internet Court, requesting that Li be ordered to make a public apology and to compensate RMB 200,000 in moral damages and rights protection expenses.
Upon trial, the Guangzhou Internet Court held that the virtual idol “X Bao” is a human-driven digital human and a product of artificial intelligence technology, and does not possess civil legal status. Although the Weibo remarks at issue were centered on “X Bao,” after Chen’s personal information as the
