September 4, 2023
With Vietnam’s entertainment industry booming, the demand for music to be used in films and video games has sharply increased. Sometimes a song featured in a movie’s soundtrack can become as popular as the movie itself.
In order to use a song in a film, the producer of the film will typically need to enter into an agreement with the owner of a copyrighted work to have permission to use that work – with an agreed amount of royalty. Otherwise, their use could be considered a copyright infringement. However, what happens if the producer enters into an agreement with a song’s purported copyright owner, only to later find that such person does not really own the song entirely? A recent high-profile case in Vietnam brought this issue to light.
The Dispute and Court Rulings
The film “Face Off 4 – The Walking Guests,” financed and produced by Ly Hai Promotion Co., Ltd (“Ly Hai”) premiered in April 2019, and soon became a big success. In this film, Ly Hai used a song called “Ganh Me” on the basis of a March 2019 contract to use the song signed with the musician Quach Beem, who was recognized as the song owner in a copyright certificate issued on 24 April 2019 by the Copyright Office of Vietnam (COV).
The dispute arose in November 2019 when an individual named Truong Minh Nhat discovered that the lyrics of “Ganh Me” were almost identical to a poem he had written and posted on his Facebook page in June 2014, well before the COV had issued the copyright certificate to Quach Beem. Mr. Nhat initiated a lawsuit against two defendants, Quach Beem and Ly Hai, for copyright infringement.
In his petition, Mr. Nhat requested the court to, among other things, recognize him as the author and owner of the lyrics