Can artists nowadays own the copyright on designs used for hundreds of years in traditional art forms? According to the Chinese court, they can, provided that they add their own innovations to the designs. This appears from a lawsuit regarding the copyright on facial makeup in the Peking Opera.

Peking opera is a traditional Chinese art form that combines music, vocal performance, mime, dance and acrobatics. Facial makeup designs are part of the art form. In 1992, painter Zhao Menglin made an album of paintings called 'Facial Makeup in the Peking Opera of China', that contains 568 types of facial makeup used in the Peking Opera and more than twenty portraits of Peking Opera Characters. Century Sunshine, a Chinese design company, used facial makeup design in its logo. The design of the logo is nearly identical to one of the facial makeup designs in Zhao's book. 

In defense, Century Sunshine stated that Zhao doesn't hold the copyright on the makeup designs in the book, as the facial makeup in the Peking Opera is a form of folk art passed from one generation to another over nearly thousand years. However, the court judged differently: although facial makeup designs are part of the traditional art and have relatively fixed patterns, Zhao added his own original style to them in terms of the use of lines and proportion. Therefore, Zhao has the copyright on his renditions of the facial makeup design. The court ordered Century Sunshine to stop using the logo and to pay Zhao a compensation.

It was not the first time Zhao sued a company for copyright infringement. According to his lawyer, he filed dozens of lawsuits.  Problems with copyright protection also occur in other traditional art forms, like embroidery and paper cutting art. Clearly, there lies a challenge in adapting the cultural heritage from the traditional art forms to the modern legal environment.

Read more about copyright developments in China on FutureOfCopyright.com:

• China plans to double penalties for copyright infringement
• China's new draft copyright law controversial among songwriters
• Chinese writers sue Apple for copyright infringement

Source: China Daily

By: Marjolein van der Heide