China

Author: Zhong Yi, Michael Ni [Shanghai Runhe Law Firm]

1.   Brief Introduction to the First Instance

The plaintiff and the defendant entered into an contract providing that both parties collaboratively develop a set of software whose support of creation and art crafts, and manufacture and sales, etc. is provided by the plaintiff and the defendant shall be responsible for development and script plan of the programme; the copyright of the product belongs to the defendant; the price of the Contract was paid separately by procedure like down payment, test and etc.; after the product is on the market for 30 days and if no quality issues which arouse return of goods, the rest payment will be made by the defendant, or the payment will be offset for the losses of goods; the copyright will be transferred to the plaintiff if the defendant is late for make payment. After the plaintiff delivered the developed software to the defendant, the defendant made it published by publisher for sale in the market under the condition that the software hasn't been accepted in a formal way.  During the procedure of sales, the plaintiff provided supplemental "Q&A of Installation" and "Software Patches" which are sold together with the software by the request of the defendant. After that, the defendant refused to make the rest payment on the grounds that the software has quality issue for which the plaintiff filed the case to the court requesting the defendant to pay the rest payment for developing the software.

Translated by: G·IPRs (Michael Ni, Katherine, Shanghai Runhe Law Firm, Version: R1.0, January 15, 2010 )

(Judicial Interpretation No. 21 [2009] )

(Adopted at the 1480th Meeting of the Judicial Committee of the Supreme People’s Court on December 21, 2009)

Announcement of the Supreme People’s Court of the People’s Republic of China