As mobile games experience explosive growth, copyright issues increasingly loom over the industry's landscape, industry observers said.

Widespread use of smartphones as well as advanced and expanding infrastructure for the mobile Internet has brought a boom in mobile gaming.

User numbers rocketed 248.4 percent to some 310 million in China last year, bringing in 11.24 billion yuan ($1.8 billion) in sales, a 246.9 percent surge compared with 2012, according to an industry report.

The flourishing business has drawn an influx of capital, which in part explains the frequent acquisitions and mergers in the industry.

It all contributes to increasingly intense competition, industry insiders said.

And the key to gaining a firm foothold is to secure copyrighted resources, they noted.

Facing huge pressure for survival, some small developers that are short of funds and technology tend to pin their hopes on copycatting popular games.

"Infringers are quite smart now. They don't use brains in creating yet sweat over counterfeiting others - instead of sheer copycats, they changes small details, which increase the difficulty in judging whether it constitutes an infringement in court," said Shanghai attorney Liu Chunquan.

A cell phone game named Fantasy in the Pocket was once ranked among the best 10 sellers yet about two months after it was introduced, it was pulled off the shelf in major channels because of piracy.

The copyright owner of anther mobile game called Fantastic Journey to the West filed a complaint against the developer and the distributor of Fantasy in the Pocket with a Beijing court, which ruled in favor of plaintiff 163.com.

Chen Haozhi, founder of Beijing Chukong Technology Co, said that in comparison with original creations, the quicker way is adapting the existing work such as cartoons, movies and novels to games.

Capitalizing on the fame and fans of the original work, adapted game developers find it easier to gain popularity in the market, Chen said. "Yet the prerequisite for adaption is to secure authorization from the original creator."

The identically named cell phone game of the popular TV reality show Where Are We Going, Dad? is now available on the market. On its debut day alone in early December 2013, downloads surpassed 1-million benchmark.

Unlike copycats, leading players are investing heavily in competing for quality resources.

Among them is Tencent, which signed an exclusive license for the digital copyright of 11 cartoons from Japanese publishing house Shueisha.

Online games developer and operator Changyou.com secured copyright authorization from renowned Hong Kong writer Cha Leung-yung for his 11 books, while Qihoo 360 Technology Co signed an agreement with Disney for cooperation.

Cell phone games based on kung fu stories are popular on the domestic market, with some 40 percent of games in the genre adapted from Cha's books, many of them unauthorized.

In cooperation with gaming dotcoms including Changyou, the writer began to maintain his rights last August.

Li Guolong, an executive at Changyou.com said the situation "has greatly improved over a half-year of efforts".

The cell phone game industry has entered a more mature and regulated development era, Li said, adding that increased awareness of intellectual property protection on the Internet also partially accounted for the improvement.

Wang Xu, an analyst at CNG games research center, told Chinanews.com that fighting for excellent copyrighted resources will remain as a focus for game developers this year.

It will also become crucial for various channels to compete for the debut rights to games based on famous copyrighted work, he said.

Like video portals, which experienced "wild and savage growth" before 2008, yet later turned to a healthy development path with a focus on copyrights, the mobile game will follow the same pattern, said Liu Hongzeng, chief operating officer of Letv.com.

Wang Junying, an attorney who worked in many cell phone game cases, said the current chaos cannot last long.

"It is a trend to the path of copyright protection," he said.

wangxin@chinadaily.com.cn

The mobile game industry is growing rapidly in China. Zhou Wei / For China Daily

(China Daily 04/09/2014 page17)