Who Authors a Video Game? Three 1982 U.S. Decisions That Made Games Audiovisual Works / 游戏是谁的作品？1982 年三份美国判决如何把游戏变成视听作品

The Jiangsu High Court has just held that Nintendo game visuals qualify as audiovisual works — yet forty years earlier, U.S. courts fiercely objected: a game is rules, and every play produces different visuals, so why count as a work? Three 1982 appellate decisions reversed that perception: video games can be audiovisual works, and the player’s choices do not defeat protection. This article unpacks that fight over rights confirmation.

江苏高院刚认定任天堂游戏画面可作视听作品——可四十年前，美国法院还激烈反对：游戏是规则、每次画面都不同，凭什么算作品？1982 年三份上诉判决扭转了认知：视频游戏可作视听作品，玩家的选择不破坏保护。本文拆解这场确权之争。

01　From a Retro Console’s Damages Verdict in China, Back to America’s Debate Four Decades Earlier

01　从中国一款复古游戏机的判赔，回到四十年前的美国那场争论

In July 2025, the Higher People’s Court of Jiangsu Province held in a copyright dispute that games developed by Nintendo, including Super Mario Bros., “possess a certain storyline and combine multiple creative means such as directing, screenwriting, art, and music; their mode of expression and creative process are highly similar to film,” so their overall visuals may be protected as audiovisual works under copyright law. On that basis, the court ordered a vendor selling counterfeit retro consoles with those games preinstalled to cease infringement and pay damages of 200,000 yuan.

2025 年 7 月，江苏省高级人民法院在一起著作权纠纷中认定，任天堂开发的《马力欧兄弟》等游戏”具有一定的故事情节，综合了导演、编剧、美工、音乐等多种创作手段，其表现形式和创作过程均与电影高度相似”，其整体画面可以作为著作权法上的视听作品受到保护。据此，法院判决销售内置这些游戏的山寨复古游戏机的商家停止侵权并赔偿二十万元。

This ruling is not new in the Chinese context, but the question it raises is far older: why should a game’s “overall visuals” count as a protected work? In U.S. legal history, this question prompted a debate far more heated than anything today.

这则判决在中国语境里并不新鲜，但它点出的问题却古老得多：一款游戏的”整体画面”凭什么成为一件受保护的作品？这个问题在美国法史上，曾有过一段远比今天激烈的争论。

On one end stood the “cannot protect” camp. In the early days of video games, the prevailing U.S. judicial view was precisely to deny protection. As Hemnes summarizes, before 1982 the stance was “copyright does not protect games,” traceable to several early precedents. The rationale can be summarized in two layers: first, the idea-expression dichotomy — a game is rules, is gameplay, and rules and gameplay are ideas, which copyright does not protect; second, the “fixation” requirement under U.S. copyright law — a console renders different visuals every time it runs, varying with how the player plays, so how can something “different every round” be fixed, let alone a work. Since it satisfies neither the idea-expression distinction nor the fixation requirement, a game naturally fell outside the reach of traditional copyright theory.

争论的一端是”不能保护”的声音。在电子游戏刚刚兴起的年代，美国法院的主流意见恰恰是拒绝保护。据 Hemnes 的归纳——在 1982 年之前，立场是”版权不保护游戏”，其源头可追溯到若干早期判例。这一立场的理由可以概括为两层：首先涉及”思想表达二分法”——游戏是规则、是玩法，而规则与玩法属于思想，版权法不保护思想；其次是关于美国版权法上的”固定”要求——一台游戏机每次运行呈现的画面都不一样，玩家怎么玩、画面就怎么变，一个”每局都不相同”的东西，谈何固定、谈何作品。既然既不满足”思想与表达的区分”，又满足不了”固定”的要求，游戏自然不在传统版权法理论射程之内。

On the other end stood industrial reality. An arcade game’s development investment routinely runs into millions of dollars, yet its life cycle lasts only a few months; once unprotected, copycats could seize the market overnight with cheap clones, wiping out the original developer’s expected return. In the early 1980s, a batch of arcade makers went to court precisely in this position, and their claim boiled down to one sentence: game visuals can be classified as audiovisual works, and no matter how the player plays, that does not change.

争论的另一端是产业的现实。一款街机游戏的开发投资动辄以千万美元计，生命周期却只有几个月，一旦不受保护，抄袭者可以在一夜之间用廉价克隆品抢占市场，把原开发者的预期回报彻底抹去。1980 年代初，一批街机厂商正是带着这样的处境走向法院，他们的主张落到一句话上：游戏画面可以归为视听作品，玩家怎么玩都改变不了这一点。

The debate found its answer in 1982. U.S. courts handled multiple game-infringement cases that same year, and three decisions — from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit — jointly established a conclusion: video games can be protected by copyright as audiovisual works, and the player’s choices do not defeat that protection.

这场争论在 1982 年迎来了答案。美国法院在同一年里连续处理了多起游戏侵权案件，其中三份判决——分别来自联邦第二巡回上诉法院、伊利诺伊北区联邦地区法院与联邦第七巡回上诉法院——共同确立了一个结论：视频游戏能够作为视听作品受版权保护，玩家的选择不会破坏这种保护。

02　The First Answer: The Visuals Are a Work; Player Participation Does Not Defeat Copyright

02　第一个答案：画面是作品，玩家参与不破坏版权

In 1982, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit squarely raised this issue for the first time in Stern Electronics, Inc. v. Kaufman.

1982 年，美国联邦第二巡回上诉法院在 Stern Electronics, Inc. v. Kaufman 案中，第一次把这个问题挑明。

The game at issue was the arcade shooter Scramble, developed by the Japanese company Konami. It is a forced side-scrolling shooter: the player pilots a craft horizontally across six scenes, dropping bombs and firing at incoming missiles and aircraft while dodging mountains and fuel depots. The plaintiff, Stern Electronics, Inc., obtained U.S. distribution rights through an exclusive sublicense, and the game quickly became a hit — selling about 10,000 units in its first two months, with sales of approximately $20 million.

涉案游戏是日本科乐美（Konami）公司开发的街机射击游戏《Scramble》（中文多直译《紧急起飞混乱》，又称《紧急出动》）。这是一款强制卷轴横版射击游戏：玩家操控一艘飞行器水平穿越六个场景，投弹、射击来犯的导弹与飞机，躲避山地与油库。原告 Stern Electronics 公司通过排他性分许可取得该游戏在美国的发行权，投入市场后迅速走红，头两个月就售出约一万台，销售额约 2000 万美元。

The defendant, Omni Video Games, soon launched a clone nearly identical to Scramble in visuals and sound, priced several hundred dollars below the original. Stern argued that what the defendant copied was the visuals and sound the game presents while running. One detail deserves notice — when registering its copyright, Stern did not, as was conventional then, register the program driving the game as a literary work; instead it registered Scramble’s “visuals and sound” as an audiovisual work. This choice was the crux of the case: from the start, the plaintiff prepared its battlefield on “visuals” rather than “program.”

被告 Omni Video Games 随即推出了一款与《Scramble》在画面和声音上几乎一模一样的克隆游戏，售价比原版低数百美元。原告 Stern 主张：被告抄袭的，是这款游戏在运行时呈现出来的画面与声音本身。这里有一个细节值得留意——Stern 在登记版权时，并没有按当时的常规做法把驱动游戏的程序登记为文字作品，而是把《Scramble》的”画面与声音”登记为视听作品。这一选择，正是本案的关键：原告从一开始准备好的战场就放在了”画面”而非”程序”上。

The defendant’s defense was the signature argument of game-clone cases in that era: the game’s entire sequence of visuals differs every round because of the player’s operation — the player chooses the craft’s route and speed, and decides when to bomb and when to fire — so each play is a “new work,” created by the player’s participation rather than fixed by the developer, and cannot be protected as a work.

被告的抗辩，是那一时期游戏抄袭案的招牌论点：游戏的整个画面序列，每一局都因玩家的操作而不同——玩家选择飞行器的路线、速度，决定何时投弹、何时射击——因此每一局游戏都是一个”新的作品”，一个由玩家参与创造、而非由开发者固定的东西，无法作为作品受到保护。

The Second Circuit rejected this defense. The court acknowledged that the game’s full sequence of visuals and sound does differ every round, depending on the route and speed the player chooses for the craft and the timing and accuracy of bombing and firing; but it also noted that a great many visual and audio elements stay constant every round — the shapes, colors, and sizes of the craft, enemy planes, missile bases, fuel depots, and terrain are unchanged, their order of appearance is unchanged, and the sounds accompanying the destruction of enemy planes or the evasion of missiles are unchanged. The court therefore concluded: a recurring sequence of a substantial portion of the game’s visuals and sound meets the conditions for protection as an audiovisual work; the player’s participation does not remove that audiovisual work from the scope of copyright protection.

第二巡回上诉法院否定了这一抗辩。法院承认，游戏的完整画面与声音序列确实每一局都不同，取决于玩家为飞行器选择的路线与速度，以及投弹射击的时机与准头；但法院同时指出，游戏中大量画面与声音元素在每一局里都保持不变——飞行器、敌机、导弹基地、油库、地形的形状、颜色与大小不变，它们的出现顺序不变，摧毁敌机或躲过导弹时伴随的声音也不变。法院据此得出结论：游戏画面与声音中一个实质性部分的重复序列，符合作为视听作品受保护的条件；玩家的参与，并不使这一视听作品退出版权保护的范围。

This is the first answer: the visuals are a work, and no matter how the player plays, that cannot be changed. But a question follows — Stern rested fixation on “large amounts of recurring visuals,” yet a game’s visuals are never exactly the same from round to round; can “recurrence” alone hold up?

这是第一个答案：画面是作品，玩家怎么玩都改变不了这一点。但一个问题随之而来——Stern 案靠的是”大量画面重复”来稳住固定性，可一款游戏每局演出的画面终究并不完全相同，仅凭”重复”就能撑住吗？

03　The Second Answer: The Player’s Choices Do Not Constitute Authorship

03　第二个答案：玩家的选择不构成创作

That same year, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois pushed the question one step further in Midway Manufacturing Co. v. Artic International, Inc.

同年，伊利诺伊北区联邦地区法院在 Midway Manufacturing Co. v. Artic International, Inc. 案中，把问题往前推进了一步。

The case involved two arcade classics, both created by the Japanese company Namco and copyrighted in the U.S. by Midway: the maze chase game Pac-Man (first released in Japan as Puckman), and the vertical shooter Galaxian. In Pac-Man, the player maneuvers Pac-Man through a maze eating dots while avoiding four colored ghosts, and can briefly fight back after eating a power pellet; in Galaxian, the player’s ship fires at dive-bombing alien formations beneath a starfield.

这一案牵涉两款街机名作，均由日本南梦宫（Namco）公司创作、美国 Midway 公司取得美国版权：迷宫吃豆游戏《吃豆人》（Pac-Man，日本首发名为《Puckman》），以及竖版射击游戏《小蜜蜂》（Galaxian）。《吃豆人》里，玩家操控吃豆人在迷宫中吞吃豆子，躲避四只彩色幽灵，吃下大力丸后可短暂反击；《小蜜蜂》里，玩家飞船在星空下射击俯冲轰炸的外星编队。

Midway defined the elements it claimed protection for very precisely: not the circuit-board design behind the game, nor the gameplay of eating dots or dodging, but the series of visuals and sounds presented on screen — the fanciful designs of the characters used to play the game, the distinctive ways those characters move, and the sounds accompanying those movements. The court accepted this definition and emphasized that copyright here protected the on-screen visuals and sound, not the chips or programs driving those visuals.

原告 Midway 主张自己受保护的元素，界定得非常具体：不是游戏背后的电路板设计，也不是吃豆、躲避这类玩法，而是屏幕上呈现的一系列画面与声音——用来游玩游戏的角色所具有的幻想性设计、这些角色移动的独特方式，以及伴随这些移动的声音。法院认可了这一界定，并强调本案中版权保护的是屏幕上的画面与声音，而不是驱动这些画面出现的芯片或程序。

On the question of “whether the player’s choice defeats protection,” Midway added a crucial step atop Stern. Stern had established that “the visuals are a work,” but a game’s visual sequence differs every round, and “recurring sequence” alone seems insufficiently secure. Midway and its later appeal carried the argument further: although the game’s visual sequence does not recur, the possibilities are finite — the player cannot arbitrarily create any visual sequence, but only picks among the limited choices the game pre-sets, a bit like arranging dictionary words into sentences or palette pigments into a painting; yet the court rejected treating the player as author on that basis — the game machine has long since written the sentences and painted the pictures for the player, who merely picks one sentence and one picture from those stored in memory.

对”玩家选择是否破坏保护”这个问题，Midway 案在 Stern 案的基础上补上了关键一步。Stern 案已经确立”画面是作品”，但游戏的画面序列毕竟每一局都不同，仅凭”重复序列”似乎还不够牢靠。Midway 案及其后续上诉审把论证推进得更彻底：游戏的画面序列虽然不重复，但可能性是有限的——玩家并不能随心所欲地创造出任何画面序列，他只能在游戏预先设定好的有限选择里挑选，这有点像把字典里的词排成句子、把调色盘上的颜料拼成画；但法院否定了由此把玩家认作作者——游戏机早已替玩家把句子写好、把画画好，玩家只从内存里储存的句子与图画中挑出一句、一幅。

The court of appeals closed the argument with a more vivid analogy: playing a game is less like writing a novel or painting a picture than like changing the channel on a television — the channel is not created by the viewer, and changing channels is not authorship.

上诉法院用一个更形象的类比收束了这个论点：玩家玩一款游戏，与其说是在写小说、画画，不如说是在给电视机换频道——频道不是观众创造的，换频道也不是创作。

Thus the second answer fell into place: the object of protection is precisely locked onto the on-screen visuals and sound; since the player can create nothing beyond what the game pre-sets, the player’s operation does not constitute authorship and does not defeat copyright protection. Yet this conclusion presupposes that the game’s “different-every-round” visual sequence itself can be recognized as a work — U.S. copyright law defines an audiovisual work as “a series of related images,” which raises the question: what is “a series of related images,” and why does a game qualify?

于是第二个答案落成：游戏的保护对象被精确地锁定在屏幕上的画面与声音之上，玩家既无法创造出游戏预置之外的东西，其操作也就不构成创作，不破坏版权保护。可是，这一结论成立的前提，是游戏那”每局不同”的画面序列本身能够被承认为一件作品——美国《版权法》把视听作品定义为”一系列相关图像”，这就得回答：何谓”一系列相关图像”，游戏又凭什么够得上这个定义？

04　The Third Answer: A “Series of Related Images” Can Be One Work

04　第三个答案：系列相关图像，可以是一件作品

The third decision, strictly speaking, did not concern a game, yet it supplied the key definitional support for “whether a game can be an audiovisual work.”

第三份判决处理的对象严格来说不是游戏，却恰恰为”游戏能否作为视听作品”提供了定义上的关键支撑。

U.S. copyright law defines an audiovisual work as “a series of related images” (a series of related images), presented by means of a machine or device and capable of being accompanied by sound. For a game to fall within this definition, it must show how its round-by-round changing visuals constitute “a series of related images” — precisely the soft spot defendants exploited when attacking the two elements of “fixation” and “work.”

美国《版权法》把视听作品定义为”一系列相关图像”（a series of related images），借助机器或设备呈现，可伴有声音。游戏要落入这个定义，必须说明它那一局一变的画面，何以构成”一系列相关图像”——这正是被告攻击”固定”与”作品”两个要件时反复借用的软肋。

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit supplied this explanation in WGN Continental Broadcasting Co. v. United Video, Inc. WGN is a Chicago television station that, within the signal of its copyrighted 9 p.m. news program, experimentally broadcast teletext — news stories and program listings — during the vertical blanking interval, for cable subscribers with decoders. The defendant, United Video, is a satellite common carrier that forwarded WGN’s programming to local cable systems; but in forwarding it deleted WGN’s teletext and substituted commercial news teletext supplied by Dow Jones. The plaintiff argued that the defendant’s deletion and substitution infringed its copyright in the 9 p.m. news as an audiovisual work.

联邦第七巡回上诉法院在 WGN Continental Broadcasting Co. v. United Video, Inc. 案中，给出了这个说明。WGN 是一家芝加哥电视台，它在自己享有版权的晚九点新闻节目的信号里，于垂直消隐间隔中试播图文广播（teletext）——新闻故事与节目表，供附设解码器的有线电视用户查看。被告 United Video 是一家卫星公共承运人，负责把 WGN 的节目转发给各地有线系统；但它在转发时，删除了 WGN 的图文，换上了道琼斯提供的商业新闻图文。原告主张：被告删除并替换的行为，侵害了它对晚九点新闻这一视听作品的版权。

The Seventh Circuit, in an opinion written by the renowned Judge Posner, held that deleting the teletext constituted infringement. The court’s core reasoning: the 9 p.m. news is an audiovisual work, and the teletext encoded in the signal, though displayed on another channel, is aimed at the same audience as the news program, broadcast in the same time slot, and forms part of the program — together these three make the teletext an indivisible part of the news program as an audiovisual work. On that basis, the court gave a broad reading of “a series of related images”: the related images need not play in a fixed sequence; as long as they are presented together as some unit, they can constitute an audiovisual work.

第七巡回上诉法院在该案判决（由著名的波斯纳法官执笔）中判定删除图文构成侵权。法院的核心论证是：晚九点新闻是一个视听作品，而编码在信号里的图文，虽在另一频道显示，却与新闻节目面向同一批观众、在同一时段播出、并作为节目的组成部分——这三者合在一起，使图文广播成为新闻节目这个视听作品不可分割的一部分。据此，法院对”一系列相关图像”给出了一种宽的解释：相关图像不必以固定序列播放，只要作为某种单元一起呈现，就可以构成一个视听作品。

The value of this reading lies in loosening the intuition that “a work must be fixed, consecutive visuals.” If even news and teletext, split across two channels and only connectable by the viewer’s switching, can be recognized as one audiovisual work, then the visuals a game triggers through player operation, surfacing in various orders, have all the more reason to be grouped as one work — the key is not whether the visuals appear in the same order every time, but whether, as a pre-set whole, they jointly serve the same work.

这一解释的价值在于松动了”作品必须是固定连续画面”的直觉。如果连分处两个频道、靠观众切换才能连起来看的新闻与图文，都能被认定为一个视听作品，那么游戏里由玩家操作触发的、以各种顺序浮现的画面，自然更有理由被归为同一个作品——判断的关键，不在于画面是否每次都以同一顺序出现，而在于它们是否作为一套预设的整体，共同服务于同一件作品。

This conclusion, seemingly unrelated to games, was soon fed back into the game cases. When the court of appeals in Midway explained how game visuals fall within the audiovisual-work definition, it expressly cited WGN: if images like “news program + teletext,” split across two channels and viewed by the viewer’s switching, can count as one audiovisual work, then a game’s round-by-round changing visuals have all the less reason to be interpreted more narrowly. Judge Posner also planted here a remark on legislative intent — when Congress legislated in 1976, it intended these definitional clauses to be flexibly interpreted so as to accommodate the new technologies that would keep emerging, rather than be narrowly boxed in and forced to amend the statute again and again.

这个看似与游戏无关的结论，很快被回填到了游戏案里。Midway 案的上诉法院在解释游戏画面如何落入视听作品定义时，明确援引了 WGN 案：既然”新闻节目＋图文广播”这样分处两个频道、由观众切换观看的图像，都能算作一个视听作品，那么游戏里那一局一变的画面，更没有理由被更狭窄地解释。波斯纳法官在此还埋下了一句关于立法意图的判断——国会在 1976 年立法时，本就想让这些定义性条款被灵活解释，以容纳未来不断出现的新技术，而不是被狭义地框死、逼得国会一遍遍修法。

Thus the third answer fell into place: a work’s “whole” need not be a fixed, consecutive sequence of visuals; the “set of images displayed together as a unit” that a game’s visual sequence presents is sufficient to constitute an audiovisual work.

第三个答案由此落成：作品的”整体”不必是一段固定的连续画面，游戏画面序列所呈现的”作为单元一起显示的一组图像”，足以构成视听作品。

05　Conclusion: A Rule Jointly Established by Three Decisions

05　结论：一个被三份判决共同确立的规则

Placing the three decisions side by side, they tell the same story: whether audiovisual games can be protected by copyright, and whether the player’s choices defeat that protection.

把三份判决并置，它们讲的是同一件事：视听游戏能不能受版权保护，玩家的选择会不会破坏这种保护。

Stern first set the floor of the subject matter — the game’s visuals and sound are a work, and player participation does not defeat copyright. Midway then pinpointed the object of protection onto the on-screen visuals and sound, and with the two arguments of “limited choices” and “channel-switching” showed that the player’s operation does not constitute authorship. WGN supplied the final piece at the definitional level — “a series of related images” can be read broadly as “a set of images displayed together as a unit,” letting the game’s round-by-round changing visual sequence stably fall within the statutory definition of an audiovisual work.

Stern 案先立住客体的下限——游戏的画面与声音是作品，玩家参与不破坏版权。Midway 案接着把保护对象精确到屏幕上的画面与声音，并用”有限选择”与”换频道”两个论证，说明玩家操作不构成创作。WGN 案则在定义层面补上最后一块拼图——”一系列相关图像”可以宽解为”作为单元一起显示的一组图像”，让游戏那每局不同的画面序列，能够稳妥地落入视听作品的法定定义。

Together, the three decisions established a rule that has been repeatedly followed for forty years since: video games can be protected by copyright as audiovisual works, and the player’s choices and operations do not defeat that protection.

三份判决合在一起，确立了一条此后四十年被反复沿用的规则：视频游戏可以作为视听作品受版权保护，玩家的选择与操作不会破坏这种保护。

Sources: Higher People’s Court of Jiangsu Province: selling counterfeit retro consoles with preinstalled Nintendo games infringes the copyright in audiovisual works (July 8, 2025, reported by IP Finance and the National Law Review, among others); Stern Electronics, Inc. v. Kaufman, 669 F.2d 852 (2d Cir. 1982); Midway Manufacturing Co. v. Artic International, Inc., 547 F. Supp. 999 (N.D. Ill. 1982), aff’d, 704 F.2d 1009 (7th Cir. 1983); WGN Continental Broadcasting Co. v. United Video, Inc., 693 F.2d 622 (7th Cir. 1982); The Adaptation of Copyright Law to Video Games, 131 U. Pa. L. Rev. 171 (1982) (Hemnes); Video Voodoo: Copyright in Video Game Computer Programs, 38 Fed. Comm. L.J. 103 (1986) (Glasser).

来源：江苏省高级人民法院：擅自销售内置任天堂游戏的复古游戏机侵犯视听作品著作权（2025 年 7 月 8 日，据知产财经网、National Law Review 等报道）；Stern Electronics, Inc. v. Kaufman, 669 F.2d 852 (2d Cir. 1982)；Midway Manufacturing Co. v. Artic International, Inc., 547 F. Supp. 999 (N.D. Ill. 1982), aff’d, 704 F.2d 1009 (7th Cir. 1983)；WGN Continental Broadcasting Co. v. United Video, Inc., 693 F.2d 622 (7th Cir. 1982)；The Adaptation of Copyright Law to Video Games, 131 U. Pa. L. Rev. 171 (1982)（Hemnes）；Video Voodoo: Copyright in Video Game Computer Programs, 38 Fed. Comm. L.J. 103 (1986)（Glasser）。