Cultural and Creative Industries and Copyright at the Regional Level: The Cases of Shenzhen and Hangzhou in China

Abstract

Cultural creative industries (CCIs) have become an important driver in motivating the modern economy around the world, and the sustainable development of CCI is calling for a proper profit mechanism. Using China as the research context, this article investigates how copyright is used in the development of CCIs. The cities of Shenzhen and Hangzhou are selected as cases, and I identify 98 representative CCI enterprises from Shenzhen and 127 representative CCI enterprises from Hangzhou to conduct the analysis. It is found that the development of CCIs in different cities shows different models with regional characteristics, and shares some characteristics in common; most CCI enterprises have experience with copyright registration; copyright is highly correlated with other types of intellectual property (e.g., patent, trademark), and there is an obvious integration of copyright and technology; judicial lawsuits have become a major tool for enterprises to use copyright to protect their benefits, with plaintiffs winning the majority of the lawsuits. This research has both significant theoretical and practical implications, and contributes to theory about the use of copyright in the development of CCI at a regional level.