The Beijing Intellectual Property Court has upheld its 2023 ruling ordering Chinese artist Ye Yongqing to pay Belgian artist Christian Silvain €650,000 in damages in the outcome of a plagiarism case started in 2019. The court also declared that Ye must issue an apology in the Global Times, a major Chinese newspaper, within ten days. This marks the first time a foreign artist has won a plagiarism case against a Chinese artist in a Chinese court.
Ye Yongqing, born in Kunming, China in 1958, graduated from the Sichuan Institute of Fine Arts in 1982, where he later became a professor. Ye’s works were acquired by major private collections and museums and achieved significant auction results. His most expensive work sold for over $1 million at XiLingYinShe Auction Co. in 2011 and his paintings have often reached prices between $200,000 and $500,000.
Born in Eupen, Belgium in 1950, Christian Silvain is a painter based in Kluisbergen. Silvain first publicly accused Ye of plagiarism in the Belgian news outlet Het Laatste Nieuws in 2019, claiming that the Chinese artist had made millions from copying his paintings. Following a five-year legal action, the Chinese court’s verdict, delivered in August 2023, found that 122 of Ye’s works had plagiarised 87 of Silvain’s. The latter has expressed relief at the decision, saying that it is ‘the end of a long battle’.
