Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

CTOnews.com, October 31, October 26, Xi'an Intermediate people's Court issued a judgment of first instance on the "Yunnan worm valley" case. The court held that a large number of users on the Douyin platform committed infringing acts on the works involved in the case, and although Douyin took measures to reduce the number of infringing works, the infringement has not been effectively curbed. Douyin therefore belongs to help infringement, and should take immediate and effective measures to delete, filter and intercept relevant videos, and compensate Tencent for economic losses and reasonable fees of more than 3240 yuan.

In this case, the Xi'an Intermediate people's Court broke the national record of awarding compensation for similar cases with a total amount of more than 32 million yuan per episode, 16 times the highest record last year, and hundreds of times that of some similar cases. The amount of 32 million yuan is also the highest compensation in film and television copyright cases obtained by Tencent, which is not only more than three times the original claim amount of Tencent in this case, but also refreshes the compensation record of online film and television copyright cases in courts across the country. This is the first time for the Shaanxi court.

Plaintiff Tencent found that there were a large number of user-uploaded clips of Yunnan Worm Valley on Douyin after it was broadcast alone by Tencent Video on August 30, 2021. So on September 22, 2021, it sued the Xi'an Intermediate people's Court, demanding that Douyin take immediate and effective measures to delete, filter and intercept the relevant videos, and compensate 10 million yuan for economic losses and reasonable expenses.

The case was formally accepted by the court on October 8, 2021, with Yao Jianjun, vice president, as the presiding judge. Before the trial, Tencent changed its lawsuit request and raised the claim amount to 90 million yuan.

Douyin argued that the relevant videos were uploaded by users and that Douyin could not substantially censor vast amounts of information because of the large number of users on the platform. And according to the law, Douyin platform only provides information network storage services and has no obligation to censor content. The platform has reminded users that the uploaded content must not infringe upon the intellectual property rights of others, and has fulfilled the obligation of notification deletion, so it does not constitute infringement.

On October 26, 2022, Xi'an Intermediate people's Court made a judgment of first instance. The court held that Douyin should undertake corresponding management obligations for infringing content on the platform, and although it has taken measures to reduce the number of infringing works, the infringement has not been effectively curbed. Therefore, the court found that Douyin constituted a help infringement and asked it to take immediate and effective measures to delete, filter and intercept the relevant videos.

Taking into account the type of work involved, production cost, well-known degree, the nature of the defendant's infringement, possible benefits and other factors, the court decided that Tencent suffered an average of 2 million yuan per episode, totaling 32 million yuan, and asked Douyin to pay Tencent more than 420000 yuan for reasonable rights protection. The court also pointed out in its decision that the case did not apply to punitive damages.

The work "Yunnan insect Valley" in this case is a suspense and adventure online drama produced by Tencent's Penguin Film and Television, adapted from the world-dominating novel "Yunnan insect Valley with Ghost blowing Lanterns". The whole play consists of 16 episodes.

Prior to this, iqiyi sued Kuaishou for "Old Nine doors" of grave robbing notes and was finally sentenced in August 2022. The series received a total of 48 episodes and received a compensation of 1 million yuan, an average of more than 20, 000 yuan per episode.

As a matter of fact, the compensation for "Old Nine doors" is already relatively high. Previously, the amount of compensation awarded by local courts for similar cases was only between tens of thousands of yuan and millions of yuan for the whole work.

According to the "Research report on related factors of right works related to Video cases affecting the amount of compensation awarded in 2021" released by intellectual property data analysis institution Zhisanbao, a total of 2549 video infringement decisions were made by courts across the country in 2021, and most of the total compensation was less than 50,000 yuan. Among them, the highest amount of compensation for the TV series is 2 million yuan for 40 episodes of "the Spring Wind is not as good as you", that is, 50,000 yuan per episode, which is only 40 yuan for the case.

The relevant legal official of Douyin said that he would appeal the case.

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