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DEFINITION OF PROFESSIONAL CRIMINAL UNDER COPYRIGHT LAW
Criminal prosecutions for violations of the Copyright Law are in principle only brought when a complaint is filed. The only exception is infringement by a professional criminal, as per Article 94 of the law. Therefore the determina-tion of whether an infringer is a professional criminal is of considerable importance. How-ever, since the Copyright Law provides no defi-nition of a professional criminal, in practice courts have taken widely differing views. In a 2000 criminal appeals judgment, the Supreme Court stated that in criminal law, professional criminal means an offender who by way of oc-cupation is repeatedly engaged in criminal ac-tivities of similar purpose. Therefore for a per-son who infringes on another's economic rights in a work by the unauthorized reproduction of copyright material to be considered a profes-sional criminal, he must meet the criteria of using repetitive reproductive methods to infringe on another's economic rights in a copyright, and of depending on such activities for his livelihood. Without this combination of repetitive repro-ductive methods and dependence thereon for livelihood, an infringer is not a professional criminal for the purposes of the Copyright Law.