On August 20, 2026, the Supreme People's Court of China issued a decision amending its judicial interpretation on copyright civil disputes. The amendment, Fa Shi [2026] No. 18, was adopted by the SPC's Judicial Committee on May 25, 2026, at its 1,976th session, and takes effect on September 1, 2026. This is the second amendment to the underlying interpretation (Fa Shi [2002] No. 31), which was first revised in 2020 to align with that year's Copyright Law amendments. The 2026 amendment runs to sixteen specific changes and trims the interpretation from 30 articles to 28, but three of those changes stand out for companies operating in China: when a work counts as published, how far the fair use defense reaches, and whether online reposting qualifies for a statutory license. General counsel, brand owners, and any company running Chinese-language content operations should read this one.

A work is now "published" the moment it is disclosed to unspecified persons, even if the disclosure was unauthorized. Fair use for artworks in public places no longer excludes indoor settings — the "outdoor" qualifier has been dropped, so the defense now reaches artworks in any public place, indoor or outdoor, which in practice is expected to extend particularly to museum and gallery interiors. Reposting an article between a newspaper or periodical and an internet platform, or between two internet platforms, no longer falls under the statutory license; it needs the copyright owner's consent and payment.

China's digital content economy is large enough that almost any Western brand with a China presence touches copyright every day. A brand reposts a media article on WeChat. A software vendor ships code that leaks before launch. A hotel chain photographs artwork in a Chinese museum for a brochure. Each of these used to sit in a gray zone. The amendment moves them into clearer territory, and the clarity is not always favorable.

Publication: a leaked work is now a published work

The prior interpretation defined "making public" as disclosure by the copyright owner or with the copyright owner's permission. That wording created a contradiction. Under Article 10 of the Copyright Law, the right of publication is the right to decide whether a work is made public. If only authorized disclosure counted as publication, then an infringer who leaked an unpublished film or manuscript was technically not "publishing" it, and the author's publication right sat idle.

The SPC deleted the "by the copyright owner or with permission" qualifier. Publication is now simply disclosing the work to unspecified persons, and public awareness of the work is not required. A work leaked by someone else is published. Chinese courts and scholars had already accepted this position, and the amendment codifies it.

The practical effect matters for software, film, and fashion clients. A source-code leak or a pre-release screen leak now triggers the publication clock for any term or presumption tied to publication. If you have unpublished works circulating in China, treat an unauthorized leak as a legal event, not just a PR problem.

Fair use moves beyond outdoor spaces

The second change concerns Article 24(1)(10) of the 2020 Copyright Law, which permits copying, drawing, photographing, or filming an artwork set up or displayed in a public place, without permission. The prior interpretation limited this to artworks in outdoor public places. The amendment drops "outdoor," so the defense in principle now reaches artworks displayed in any public place — a change legal commentators expect to be applied particularly to public and commercial art museums and exhibition halls, which previously sat outside the defense.

But the SPC added a condition. A person who photographs, draws, or films a publicly displayed artwork may reuse the resulting work in a reasonable manner. What they may not do, without permission, is set up, display, or publicly transmit it in the same manner as the original. In practice, you can likely sell a photograph of a public sculpture, but you cannot project a museum's painting onto a wall or build a replica installation.

For foreign galleries, museums, and tourism brands operating in China, this is a real shift. The protection you relied on for outdoor sculptures and murals now extends, in principle, to indoor holdings as well. The catch is that the "reasonable manner" test has no bright line yet. Expect early cases to define it, and expect defendants to over-read it.

Online reposting loses its free pass

The third change is the one most likely to trip up content teams. Article 35(2) of the Copyright Law lets newspapers and periodicals reprint published works without permission, subject to payment and unless the author declared no reprinting. The prior interpretation left "newspaper and periodical" undefined, which courts stretched in different directions.

The SPC now defines it as paper newspapers and periodicals approved by the relevant authority, plus their digital editions that match the content and layout of the print version. It then adds a new paragraph: reposting between newspapers, periodicals, and internet information service providers, or between two internet information service providers, does not fall under the statutory license. That reposting requires the copyright owner's permission and payment.

This is the clearest signal in the amendment. A Chinese news portal or WeChat account that lifts an article from a newspaper's website can no longer claim the statutory license as a defense. Foreign companies that run syndication, translation, or curation pipelines for Chinese media content should assume consent is required for nearly all online republishing. The digital edition carve-out is narrow; the layout and format must match the print version.

Other changes worth noting

The amendment makes a number of additional adjustments beyond the three above, mostly procedural: it removes the interpretation's level-of-court jurisdiction rule to align with broader IP case allocation reforms, replaces references to the "copyright administrative department" with "copyright authority," drops a presumption tied to authorship attribution in the evidence rules, and removes a burden-of-proof clause for publishers. Two changes are worth flagging for content and legal teams specifically:

"Current affairs news," a phrase the prior interpretation used inconsistently, has been replaced with "pure factual information," aligning the interpretation's terminology with the wording already used in the 2020-revised Copyright Law's Article 5(2). This is best read as a housekeeping fix to bring the interpretation in line with the statute, rather than a substantive narrowing of what counts as unprotected news.

The damages provision also changes the sequence courts must follow. Previously, statutory damages became available once a rights holder's actual loss or the infringer's illegal profit was hard to calculate. Now, courts must find that actual loss, the infringer's profit, and a reasonable royalty are all difficult to calculate before falling back to statutory damages — meaning rights holders are pushed toward establishing a royalty figure as a distinct method of proving damages, rather than defaulting straight to the statutory measure. The amendment separately adds the infringer's degree of fault as a factor courts must weigh when setting the statutory damages amount.

The commercial picture

The impact is uneven across industries. Media and publishing businesses face the sharpest change, because the online reposting rule removes a defense their content teams leaned on. Reposting shifts from a statutory payment to negotiated licensing, and syndication costs will rise accordingly. Technology companies with unpublished software or models should note the publication rule: a leak can now start legal clocks and alter what was previously confidential. Museums, galleries, and tourism operators gain broader fair use protection in principle but inherit the "reasonable manner" condition, which will generate its own litigation until courts draw the boundary.

Two groups should watch for early cases. Rights holders in film, software, and fashion now have a cleaner claim when their unpublished work is leaked, so they will litigate to establish the new publication standard. Chinese media companies, meanwhile, will push the digital-edition carve-out as far as it can go to preserve cheap online distribution. Whichever side wins the first appellate decisions will set the template for everyone else.

What foreign companies should do

If you operate in China, three steps follow directly from this amendment:

First, audit your reposting and syndication. Map every pipeline that moves Chinese-language articles into your sites, apps, or social accounts. Where the source is a newspaper or a third-party website, assume you need a license. The statutory license defense you might have leaned on is gone for reposting that involves an internet platform on either end.

Second, review how you handle unpublished material. If source code, films, or designs circulate pre-release, build a response that treats an unauthorized leak as a publication event with legal consequences, not just a security incident.

Third, revisit your museum, gallery, and public-art clearances. The fair use defense in principle now extends beyond outdoor spaces, but it is conditional. If you photograph or film Chinese artworks for commercial use, document what "reasonable manner" means for your specific reuse, and clear anything that reproduces the work in the same manner as the original.

The amendment covers sixteen changes to a 2002 interpretation already revised once in 2020, but its effect for most foreign companies is concentrated in the three areas above. Chinese courts will now apply one answer to publication, fair use, and online reposting. Foreign companies will feel that consistency most in their content and clearance operations. If you run a cross-border IP strategy that touches Chinese media, unpublished assets, or public artwork, we can walk through what this amendment changes for your specific setup.