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The judgment of the first generative artificial intelligence infringement dispute case in Jiangsu Province provides an important judicial precedent for the copyright protection of AI Generated Content (AIGC). In this case, the plaintiff Lin Chen used the Midjourney software to generate the floor plan of *Companion Heart* by adjusting prompts for multiple times, modified the details in Photoshop, and finally completed a creative work depicting a half heart-shaped balloon by the Huangpu River at night. Lin Chen registered the work as a fine art work with the National Copyright Administration of China in April 2023. Later, he found that a Hangzhou-based technology company published a highly similar picture on social media without authorization, and a Changshu-based real estate company further converted the creative concept of the picture into a physical installation for commercial publicity. Lin Chen accordingly filed a lawsuit, demanding the two defendants to cease the infringement and pay RMB 500,000 in compensation.

During the court trial, the defendant, a Hangzhou-based company, argued that the heart shape of the image involved in the case is a common geometric figure lacking originality, and the amount of compensation claimed by the plaintiff is unreasonable. The defendant Changshu Real Estate Company emphasized that the physical installation and the planar drawing do not constitute substantial similarity, and stated that the design scheme was provided by a third-party advertising company, but it failed to submit relevant contract evidence. Upon examination, the court found that during the creation process, the plaintiff exercised personalized control over the size, quantity, shape and other elements of the heart-shaped balloons by adjusting prompt words, supplemented by manual image retouching. This series of operations reflects original intellectual investment. Meanwhile, the Midjourney User Agreement explicitly stipulates that the rights to generated content belong to the user, which further consolidates the right foundation of the plaintiff. Although the images published by the defendant differ from the original work in aspect ratio and background details, their core design of "half a heart floating on the water surface" is highly consistent, which constitutes substantial similarity. Therefore, the court determines that the act of online dissemination infringes upon the plaintiff's right of communication through information network and right of authorship.

However, the court rejected the plaintiff's claim concerning infringement of physical installations. The judge pointed out that the copyright of *Banxin* only covers the registered graphic fine art works, while the design of physical installations falls into three-dimensional artistic expression. Since the half-heart shape is overly simplistic and there are a large number of prior precedents of such design, the design per se does not possess originality. Therefore, the defendants' construction of three-dimensional installations based on the same creative concept does not constitute an act of reproduction from two-dimensional to three-dimensional form. The court finally rendered a judgment ordering the two defendants to make a public apology on social media for three consecutive days and pay RMB 10,000 as compensation for economic losses and reasonable expenses, while the claim related to physical installations was not upheld.

This case has for the first time established the dual determination criteria of "process control + result originality" in judicial practice, emphasizing that the creative control exercised by AI users through prompt adjustment and post-processing can qualify them as "authors" in the legal sense. This judgment not only fills the legal gap in AIGC copyright protection, but also balances the relationship between technological innovation and right protection: it stimulates industrial vitality by recognizing the creative value of AI tools, and prevents copyright abuse by defining the scope of rights, providing an operable judicial paradigm for human-machine collaborative creation in the digital age. Sun Ping, an expert from East China University of Political Science and Law, commented that this adjudication logic has accurately captured the demand for reshaping legal rules posed by generative AI, and responded to the dual challenges of technological ethics and industrial development through a dynamic right allocation mechanism.