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

CTOnews.com, December 1 (Xinhua)-- the official "Minecraft" said last night that it had ushered in the final verdict of the Guangdong Provincial higher people's Court on safeguarding the rights of "my world" to "mini-world", which belonged to every adventurer, in response to the fact that "Mini-play was awarded a compensation of 50 million yuan" to NetEase.

Earlier, Mini World officials responded that it respected the verdict of the Guangdong Provincial High Court and that Mini World would continue to operate normally and apologized to all my World and Mini World players affected by the dispute.

CTOnews.com learned that the Guangdong Provincial higher people's Court made a final judgment on the copyright infringement and unfair competition dispute case of Guangzhou NetEase Company and Shanghai NetEase Company v. Shenzhen Mini play Company yesterday (November 30). It found that Shenzhen Mini play Company constituted unfair competition, ordered it to delete 230tort elements in the game, and compensated NetEase Company 50 million yuan. This is also the highest amount of compensation awarded in domestic game infringement disputes.

According to the case information, "my World" is a popular sandboxie game developed by Sweden's Mojang company in 2009. In May 2016, NetEase announced that it had won the exclusive right to operate the game in China, with the right to protect its rights against any intellectual property infringement and unfair competition. In the same month, Shenzhen Mini Game Company launched "Mini World" on mobile Android, and then launched mobile iOS and computer versions one after another. In 2019, NetEase filed a lawsuit with the Shenzhen Intermediate people's Court, accusing Mini World of plagiarizing many of the core basic elements of the game. The overall pictures of the two games are highly similar, which constitute copyright infringement and unfair competition. Appeal to the court to order Mini play company to stop infringement, eliminate influence, compensate 50 million yuan, and so on. The Shenzhen Intermediate people's Court of first instance found that "Mini World" constituted copyright infringement and ordered Mini play Company to delete infringing game elements and compensate NetEase Company for more than 2113 yuan. Subsequently, both sides were not satisfied and filed an appeal to the Guangdong High Court.

The Guangdong High Court found out that the two games involved in the case belonged to sandboxie games, in which only basic game goals and rules were set, and basic game resources or elements such as wood, food, and biology were provided to players, allowing players to explore and interact freely in the virtual world. Players can use the basic game resources preset by the game to create virtual objects, buildings, landscapes and even the game world by means of destruction, synthesis, construction and so on. "Mini World" mainly benefits from user recharge, with more than 3.36 billion downloads from various channels and more than 400 million registered users so far.

The Guangdong High Court held that the overall pictures of the two games constitute electric works, that is, the "audio-visual works" of the new copyright law, but the similarity between the two lies in the design of game elements rather than game pictures. NetEase's claim for copyright infringement was therefore rejected. At the same time, the court held that "Mini World" and "my World" are highly similar in the rules of playing laws and regulations, and there is a lot of overlap in the details of the game elements, which has gone beyond the limits of reasonable reference. Mini play company directly grabs the key and core personalized business value of other people's intellectual achievements by plagiarizing the design of game elements, and grabs business opportunities by means of improperly obtaining other people's business interests, which constitutes unfair competition. In determining the amount of compensation, the court held that Mini play Company, as the infringer, should have the relevant data of operating income, but refused to provide it to the court without good reason, and should bear the legal consequences of adverse presumption. according to the third-party platform showing "Mini World" downloads, income data and other superior evidence, comprehensive calculation shows that Mini Game Company's tort profit far exceeds the amount of compensation claimed by NetEase Company. Therefore, he fully supports his claim for compensation.

Related readings:

"infringement

The final decision of the dispute case: mini play compensates NetEase 50 million yuan, but will continue to operate. "

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