Owner to pay up over fake artwork

The owner of the popular nightclub The World of Suzie Wong has been ordered to pay 35,000 yuan in compensation to a sculptor after using the image of a fake artwork in an advertisement.

The nightclub will also be forced to publicly apologize to artist Li Xiangqun, a sculptor and professor at the Academy of Art and Design of Tsinghua University.

At the center of the case is Li's sculpture of the half-naked empress Ci Xi of Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), which was exhibited at the Third Beijing International Art Biennial on July 8, 2008.

Li made five identical sculptures and sold three for about 5 million yuan each to an overseas art research institute and a museum.

Li told METRO yesterday that he was satisfied with the outcome.

"I don't care about the compensation. I just hope the public can realize the importance of copyright protection," he said.

A media representative of Suzie Wong said yesterday that she had not received details about the judgment from their lawyer on the "old case".

Li filed a copyright infringement case with Chaoyang district court at the end of 2008 after seeing the image of his sculpture in a magazine advertisement for the nightclub.

"If they had contacted me for commercial cooperation, I might have said yes. But I felt so upset by seeing my work in this way," said Li, adding the imitation was also very "ugly".

In December 2008, Li sued Suzie Wong for infringing his copyright and asked the club for an apology and 550,000 yuan in compensation.

Suzie Wong explained that the picture in the advertisement was taken from a painting bought at a second-hand goods market, but they could not provide evidence of this.

The copyright infringement on original artworks is ubiquitous in Chinese market. Imitation and illegal commercial use of artwork imagery in advertisements are common methods of infringement.