On August 4, a civil judgment of the first instance in a dispute over copyright infringement and unfair competition between Tencent and the Chinese version of TikTok Douyin's operating company, Beijing Microlive Vision Technology Co., Ltd.
The plaintiff, Tencent, claimed that the defendant knew that the short videos of the game "Honor of Kings" on its "Douyin" website and "Douyin" app were unauthorized. To attract traffic, it allowed and helped users to spread the infringing short videos. After receiving the infringement notification letter from the plaintiff, the defendant refused to remove it.
As a competitor in the same industry, the defendant should have known that the plaintiff prohibited game users from "recording, live-streaming or disseminating Tencent's game content to others in any way without Tencent's permission," and even knew that the "Honor of Kings" game videos on its "Douyin" platform were unauthorized. In order to attract traffic, it allowed and helped users to disseminate infringing short videos and refused to delete them after receiving the plaintiff's infringement notification letter, so it should be liable for copyright infringement to the plaintiff according to law.
Tencent also stated that the defendant allowed the dissemination of "Honor of Kings" game content on its "Douyin" platform, and then used the users and traffic attracted by "Honor of Kings" game content to obtain commercial benefits, and improperly seized the market and user resources of "Honor of Kings" game videos. It is a typical act of unfair competition that violates the principle of honesty and credit and accepted business ethics, which is "detrimental to others and benefits others."
In this regard, Tencent requested the court to order the defendant to immediately stop infringing the copyright of the plaintiff's "Honor of Kings" game and compensate the plaintiff for economic losses and reasonable expenses of 5.2 million yuan to maintain rights.
The court held that the continuous dynamic images formed in the running state of the game in question constituted electric works protected by the copyright law, and the plaintiff was the right holder of such works. On this basis, the user in question uploaded the continuous motion pictures of the game to the Douyin platform without permission so that the public could obtain the continuous motion pictures of the game in question at a time and place of their personal choice, which constituted an infringement of the plaintiff's right of information network dissemination.
The court awarded Beijing Microlive Vision Technology Co., Ltd. compensation of 500,000 yuan for economic loss and 100,000 yuan for reasonable expenses for the defense of the plaintiff's rights.
