On August 20, 2026, the Supreme People's Court of China (SPC) issued its Decision amending the Interpretation on Several Issues Concerning the Application of Laws in the Trial of Civil Copyright Dispute Cases. It takes effect on September 1, 2026 and brings the Interpretation from 30 articles to 28. This is the second amendment since the Interpretation was adopted in 2002. It aligns the Interpretation with the Copyright Law as amended in 2020 and brings greater consistency to how the courts apply it.

The amendments address key and difficult issues arising in copyright adjudication, including the determination of publication, the boundaries of fair use, and the scope of the statutory license for reproduction by newspapers and periodicals. Each is taken up below.

First, the test for when a work has been "made available to the public." The former provision required that the disclosure be made by the copyright owner or with the owner's authorization. New Article 8 removes that qualifier, so disclosure without authorization now falls within the definition as well. The old wording was circular: the right of publication is the right to decide whether a work is made available to the public, yet that phrase was itself defined as authorized disclosure. An unauthorized disclosure therefore fell outside the definition on its face, which made a claim hard to establish. Removing the qualifier removes that obstacle. Owners now have a cleaner route to enforcement where unreleased scripts, design proposals, or unlaunched content have been leaked, with the evidentiary focus shifting to the fact of disclosure, the audience reached, and the timing.

Second, fair use of artistic works in public places. New Article 16 drops the "outdoor" qualifier, so sculptures and murals permanently installed in places such as mall atriums, airport terminals, subway stations, and hotel lobbies now fall within scope. But a new proviso provides that the results of copying, drawing, photographing, or filming such works may not be installed, displayed, or publicly disseminated in the same manner without the owner's authorization. For stock-image libraries, cultural and creative product businesses, and exhibition operators, the question is no longer whether they may shoot, but what they may do with the material afterwards.

Third, the scope of the statutory license for newspaper and periodical reprints. New Article 17 confines the license to print newspapers and periodicals and to "digital editions consistent with them in content and page layout," and excludes reprinting between newspapers or periodicals and internet information service providers, as well as between internet information service providers themselves. What the license covers is a digital rendering of the original page layout, not a publisher's digital operations as a whole. For aggregation platforms and publishers moving to digital, this is a tightening rather than a loosening: reprinting requires authorization and payment. The Interpretation has always required reprints to credit the author and the original source, but that is an attribution obligation and it does not substitute for the authorization and payment the new paragraph requires.

Three further adjustments are worth noting. 

1) Article 23 removes "reasonable licensing fees" from the factors courts weigh in setting statutory damages and adds "the degree of fault of the accused infringer," so a party's speed in responding to a warning letter, and its documented compliance trail, now feed directly into the award.

2) Article 1 confirms that actions for a declaration of non-infringement count as infringement disputes, and adds "disputes over liability for damage arising from a pre-litigation or in-litigation application to stop infringing acts".

3) Article 18 changes a publisher's exposure from "liability for damages" to "civil liability."

The second paragraph of former Article 7 and former Article 19 have also been deleted. What they covered is now in the Copyright Law as amended in 2020, at Articles 12 and 59. 

Taken together, this is a modest amendment with concrete targets. Each change addresses a question that has recurred in practice, and none alters the basic framework. The businesses most likely to need adjustments are those involving content reprinting, photography in public places, and dealings in works not yet published. If any of this touches your operations in China, we would be glad to talk it through. Please feel free to reach out to us at Chang Tsi & Partners.