Entertainment Law Newsletter | May 21, 2026

Key Focus

The China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) issued the “2026 Action Plan for Advancing the Building of a Strong Intellectual Property Nation” — requiring the continuous implementation of special enforcement campaigns such as the “Sword Net 2026” campaign against online infringement and piracy and the “Sword Shadow 2026” campaign for the protection of theatrical film copyrights, while improving early warning mechanisms for key works and copyright protection mechanisms for cultural and creative products.
The Haidian District People’s Court of Beijing concluded a criminal case involving the sale of tutorials and software for producing pornographic materials using AI and the illegal obtaining of profits therefrom, constituting the crime of illegal use of information networks — this case falls under “tool-providing” AI-related crime, and the judgment clarifies that technological tools shall not be designed for or substantially used in the commission of unlawful or criminal activities.
The Fuzhou Intermediate People’s Court concluded a trademark infringement dispute involving the use of AI agents to infringe the “Alipay” series of registered trademarks — the defendant used an AI model to set the names of AI agents under its company as “Alipay Merchant Service Provider” and others for advertising and traffic diversion; the court held that this constituted trademark infringement and ordered the defendant to pay RMB 150,000 in damages.

News

China Media Group and FIFA reached a new-cycle copyright cooperation: the events covered include the 2026 FIFA World Cup in the United States, Canada and Mexico, the 2030 FIFA World Cup, the 2027 FIFA Women’s World Cup, and the 2031 FIFA Women’s World Cup. China Media Group obtained exclusive all-media rights and media sub-licensing rights for the events in Mainland China during this cooperation cycle.
The National Radio and Television Administration (NRTA) released the 2025 National Radio and Television Industry Statistical Bulletin: a total of 110 TV drama titles, comprising 3,376 episodes, were produced and distributed nationwide; 122 online dramas, 154 online films, and 691 key micro-short dramas were granted distribution licenses; the average daily time that netizens spent watching online audiovisual programs (including short videos) reached 205 minutes
The NRTA held a work deployment and promotion meeting for the “Premium Micro-Short Drama Creation and Communication Plan”: at the meeting, the “Implementation Plan for the ‘Premium Micro-Short Drama Creation and Communication Plan’” was released, requiring six online audiovisual platforms to invest at least RMB 6 billion to support the creation and dissemination of high-quality live-action micro-short dramas.
As of the afternoon of 18 May, the total national box office in 2026 had exceeded RMB 14.5 billion. “Letter to Grandma” ranked first in the daily box office chart for nine consecutive days, with a cumulative box office exceeding RMB 640 million, surpassing “Zootopia” to become the fifth highest-grossing film of 2026.
The People’s Government of Chaoyang District, Beijing issued the “Three-Year Action Plan (2026–2028) for Promoting High-Quality Development of the IP Designer Toy Industry in Chaoyang District”: the plan aims to achieve IP designer toy industry revenue in Chaoyang District exceeding RMB 50 billion within three years, with an average annual growth rate of not less than 20%, and to incubate no fewer than 10 blockbuster designer toy IPs.
The Short Video and Short Film Working Committee of the Henan Provincial Audiovisual Industry Association issued the “Self-Disciplinary Convention on the Application of AI Technology in the Micro-Short Drama Industry of Henan Province”: it strictly prohibits the use of AI technology to engage in plagiarism, rewriting, piracy, unauthorized rebroadcasting, adaptation without authorization, infringing re-uploading and similar acts; without the rights holder’s explicit written authorization, AI technology shall not be used for face-swapping, voice imitation, image synthesis, virtual performance and other activities.
Tencent announced its financial results for the first quarter of 2026: game revenue in the domestic market reached RMB 45.4 billion, a year-on-year increase of 6%; game revenue in international markets reached RMB 18.8 billion, a year-on-year increase of 13%; evergreen titles “Honor of Kings”, “Peacekeeper Elite” and “Delta Force” all recorded all-time high gross billings in the quarter.
iQIYI announced its financial results for the first quarter of 2026: total revenue reached RMB 6.23 billion, of which membership services revenue was RMB 4.2 billion, representing a quarter-on-quarter increase of 2%; overseas business recorded strong growth, with overseas membership revenue in the first quarter reaching a historical high; going forward, the company will use AI to reduce content production costs and accelerate production processes.
Bilibili announced its financial results for the first quarter of 2026: total revenue reached RMB 7.47 billion, and the gross profit margin increased to 37.1%; average daily active users reached 115 million, a year-on-year increase of 8%; average daily user time spent increased to 119 minutes, reaching a historical high.

Cases

Guangzhou Internet Court: where a platform proactively intervenes in the content production process and engages in editing, tampering with, adding to, or independently publishing information, it shall be identified as a network content service provider. The defendant platform, under the pretext of “assisting with complaints”, tampered with user complaint content, added false information and maliciously disseminated it, and refused to delete posts on the ground that payment was required, thereby constituting an infringement of the right of reputation; the court ordered it to compensate the plaintiff in the amount of RMB 10,000.

Key Focus

CNIPA Issues the “2026 Action Plan for Advancing the Building of a Strong Intellectual Property Nation”

The “Action Plan” makes systematic arrangements for copyright-related work in 2026, covering copyright registration, development of the copyright industry, special copyright enforcement campaigns, and the formulation of intellectual property rules in new fields such as artificial intelligence, including in particular:

· Improving the copyright protection system, accelerating the revision of supporting regulations such as the Regulations for the Implementation of the Copyright Law, formulating the “15th Five-Year Plan” for copyright work, further regulating copyright registration work and rectifying abnormal registration applications, promoting the realization of integrated services for copyright registration, inquiry, monitoring and statistics, and continuously optimizing online processing models.

· Promoting high-quality development of the copyright industry, vigorously cultivating and developing the copyright industry, carrying out pilot projects for the protection and promotion of folk art copyrights, advancing the standardized development of copyright trading centers; guiding copyright collective management organizations to expand their business, strengthening cooperation with relevant industry associations, and promoting standardized certification work by overseas copyright certification institutions.

· Strengthening copyright enforcement and protection, deploying and carrying out special campaigns such as the “Sword Net 2026” campaign against online infringement and piracy, the “Sword Shadow 2026” campaign for the protection of theatrical film copyrights, and the Youth Copyright Protection Season, and improving early warning mechanisms for works in key areas and copyright protection mechanisms for cultural and creative products.

· Exploring and improving intellectual property protection rules for new fields and new business forms such as big data, artificial intelligence and blockchain, deeply participating in global governance under the framework of the World Intellectual Property Organization, and promoting the formulation of international intellectual property rules for new fields and new business forms such as artificial intelligence.

Source: China National Intellectual Property Administration

The Haidian District People’s Court of Beijing Concludes a Case Involving the Crime of Illegal Use of Information Networks for Selling Tutorials and Software for Producing Pornographic Materials Using AI and Illegally Profiting Therefrom

From August 2023 to June 2025, the defendant Chen established and managed multiple communication groups, in which he posted information on producing pornographic materials and published pornographic images and videos to attract group members to pay and enter paid groups in order to obtain tutorials and applications for producing pornographic materials using AI. The AI drawing software sold by Chen originated from an integrated package and image generation modules available as open source on the internet, but he preset in the software specific parameters and instruction templates capable of generating pornographic content, thereby lowering the technical threshold for users to produce pornographic materials. Upon investigation, Chen had obtained illegal gains totaling more than RMB 100,000 through the above methods. After arriving at the case, he truthfully confessed the facts of the crime and voluntarily pleaded guilty and accepted punishment during the trial.

Upon trial, the Haidian District People’s Court of Beijing held that Chen’s conduct met the constituent elements of the crime of illegal use of information networks, namely “establishing communication groups for producing prohibited items” and “using information networks to disseminate information on the commission of illegal and criminal acts related to the production of pornographic materials”, and that his illegal gains amounted to more than RMB 100,000, which met the standard for “serious circumstances”. Ultimately, the court convicted Chen of the crime of illegal use of information networks and sentenced him to a fixed-term imprisonment of one year and six months and a fine of RMB 20,000, and, in accordance with the law, confiscated his illegal gains and the tools used in the commission of the crime.

This case is different from situations where AI is directly used to generate pornographic content and falls under “tool-providing” AI-related crime. The court explicitly pointed out that technology itself is neutral, but technological tools shall not be designed for or substantially used in the commission of unlawful or criminal activities. By presetting in the AI drawing software specific parameters and instruction templates capable of generating pornographic images and videos, Chen lowered the technical threshold for users to produce pornographic materials and profited therefrom, and shall bear corresponding legal liability.

Source: Haidian District People’s Court of Beijing

The Fuzhou Intermediate People’s Court Concludes a Trademark Infringement Dispute Involving the Use of AI Agents to Infringe the “Alipay” Series of Registered Trademarks

In this case, the plaintiff Alipay Company, by authorization, enjoys rights in the registered trademarks such as “Alipay” and is entitled to bring actions in its own name against acts infringing the exclusive rights to use the relevant trademarks. The plaintiff argued that the “Alipay” and other related registered trademarks have extremely high reputation and goodwill nationwide and have been protected as well-known trademarks on multiple occasions. The defendant, a certain Fujian company, without the plaintiff’s permission, created multiple AI agents on a certain AI platform that are identical to the “Alipay” trademark, including “Alipay Tap-to-Pay”, “Alipay Direct Pay”, “Alipay Ruyi”, “Alipay Leasing Treasure”, “Alipay Merchant Service Provider” and others for commercial promotion and traffic diversion. Such conduct is highly likely to cause confusion among the relevant public and constitutes trademark infringement. The plaintiff therefore brought a lawsuit before the Fuzhou Intermediate People’s Court, requesting the court to order cessation of the infringement and compensation for damages.

Upon trial, the Fuzhou Intermediate People’s Court held that the defendant set the names of AI agents on a certain AI platform to names containing the “Alipay” trademark and used them for advertising and traffic diversion. Such use is capable of identifying the source of services and constitutes trademark use within the meaning of the Trademark Law. Although the defendant is a contracted service provider of Alipay, Alipay Company explicitly prohibits service providers, in the “Service Provider Platform Service Agreement”, from using Alipay’s trademarks for any activities without its written consent. By using “Alipay” in the names of AI agents for promotion, the defendant easily causes the relevant public to mistakenly believe that such business activities and services are authorized by Alipay Company or arranged and provided by Alipay Company, or that the services it provides have some connection or cooperative relationship with Alipay Company, thereby causing confusion among the relevant public as to the source of services, which violates the provisions of the “Service Provider Platform Service Agreement” and clearly exceeds the scope of fair use.

In summary, the Fuzhou Intermediate People’s Court found that the defendant’s conduct constituted an infringement of the exclusive rights to use the “Alipay” series of registered trademarks owned by Alipay Company, and ordered the defendant to immediately cease the infringing acts. Taking into account the reputation of the registered trademarks involved, and the nature and circumstances of the defendant’s infringing acts, the court, at its discretion, determined that the defendant shall compensate Alipay Company for economic losses and reasonable expenses for rights protection totaling RMB 150,000.

Source: NetEase