Copyright Legality Issues and Legal Controversies Based on the Act of Restoration of Cultural Heritage as Works of Fine Arts

As the Chinese government has been paying more and more attention to the conservation of cultural heritage over the past few years. We now know that conservation measures such as preservation and restoration, which accompany the exhibition of cultural relics, are an important part of whether cultural heritage can be presented perfectly to the world. From the perspective of artworks, cultural heritage sometimes exists as a form of artwork, and this article is an exploration of the legality of copyright in the restoration of cultural heritage. The central issue in this article is to determine whether the restoration is original and whether it infringes the copyright of the original author. When a cultural heritage is restored as a work of art, the act is also a modification of the work itself in terms of the form of the work itself. Such restoration or modification may give rise to problems and controversies regarding copyright, but the essence of these problems and controversies is the contradiction between the interests of the restoration subject and the public interest, as it is difficult for restoration experts to determine the legitimacy of copyright, it is difficult to protect the restoration results of cultural relics according to law. At the same time, the Chinese government was relatively late in establishing a legal system for the protection of restoration, leaving many institutions and workrooms with a chronic lack of industry regulations. In practice, it is inevitable to encounter legal issues such as defining the legal nature of restoration, identifying restoration effects, principles of attribution of responsibility for restoration failures, and copyright ownership of restored works.