Lawman Park's De Yuan's Voice 2022-11-02 11:03 Published in Beijing

On October 26, 2022, regarding the case of Tencent v. Shake Sound "Yunnan Bug Valley" infringement of copyright and unfair competition, the Xi'an Intermediate People's Court issued a first instance verdict: Shake Sound constituted help infringement and determined that Shake Sound should compensate Tencent for the damages involved in the case of 32 million yuan (2 million yuan per episode) and litigation costs of 426,900 yuan. The Xi'an Intermediate Court noted that punitive damages were not applicable in this case.

The case was formally accepted by the court on October 8, 2021. The plaintiff Tencent claimed that after the exclusive broadcast of "Yunnan Bug Valley" on Tencent Video on August 30, 2021, a large number of user-uploaded clips of the drama existed on ShakeYin. So it sued, demanding that ShakeYin immediately take effective measures to delete, filter and intercept the relevant videos, and compensate for economic losses and reasonable costs of 10 million yuan.

The defendant ShakeYin argued that the relevant videos were uploaded by the users themselves and the platform had a large number of users, so it was impossible for ShakeYin to substantially review the massive amount of information; and according to the law, the ShakeYin platform only provides information network storage services and has no content review obligations. The platform has reminded users that the uploaded content should not infringe others' intellectual property rights and has fulfilled the obligation of notifying deletion, so it does not constitute infringement.

Before the case went to trial, Tencent changed its claim and increased the amount claimed to 90 million yuan. on October 26, 2022, the Xi'an Intermediate People's Court issued a first instance verdict. The court held that Jitterbug should assume corresponding management obligations for infringing content in its platform, and although it took measures to reduce the number of infringing works, the infringement was still not effectively curbed. Therefore, the court found that Jitterbug constituted help infringement and required Jitterbug to immediately take effective measures to delete, filter and intercept the relevant videos.

It is reported that the web drama "Yunnan Bug Valley" was adapted from the novel "Ghost Blows Out the Light of Yunnan Bug Valley" series, and the number of plays broke 100 million in 8 hours after broadcast, and soon after broadcast, a large number of users uploaded clips on Jitterbug.

Previously, Love QiYi had sued Crypto for the Tomb Raider's "Old Nine Gates" and was awarded a final judgment in August 2022 for 1 million yuan. 2021 for the 40-episode TV series "Spring Breeze is Better than You" was awarded 2 million yuan, or 50,000 yuan per episode.