Hysome Cases | Beijing Kuaishou Technology Co., Ltd. v. an information technology company in Shanghai for an unfair competition dispute

Case description:

The plaintiff discovered that the defendant provided the services of removing the watermark of the short video from Kuaishou to its users through the app involved in the case, which could remove the video watermarks where Kuaishou had an important competitive advantage, causing an adverse effect on the plaintiff. In October 2019, the plaintiff entrusted our lawyer Sun Binyan to file a rights protection lawsuit, requiring the defendant to publish a statement on its unfair competition behavior in a national newspaper for 30 consecutive days to eliminate the impact and compensate the plaintiff for economic losses of RMB 100,000 yuan and other reasonable expenses.

There are three focuses of dispute in this case:

first, the impact of the watermarks involved in the case on Kuaishou's business activities;

second, whether the defendant's development and operation of the app involved in the case was legitimate;

third, if the operation of the app involved in the case was not legitimate, how to assume responsibility.

In July 2021, Haidian District People's Court in Beijing, held a trial and determined that Kuaishou's marking of watermarks on the videos involved in the case was within the scope of its business autonomy. The defendant's development and operation of the video watermark removal function of the APP involved in the case was not legitimate and constituted unfair competition. The defendant is ordered to compensate our client for economic losses of RMB 100,000 yuan and all reasonable expenses claimed by our client.

As the first unfair competition dispute case to remove short video watermarks in China, this case was selected for the “2021 China New Entertainment Top Ten Influential Case Awards” organized by the Shanghai Intellectual Property Research Association. It is of pioneering and typical significance in the legal characterization of such infringement.