Recently, the dispute over the copyright of long and short videos has made new progress. On October 26, 2022, the Xi’an Intermediate People’s Court made a first-instance judgment on the “Yunnan Insect Valley” case. The court held that a large number of users on the Douyin platform committed infringing acts on the works involved. Although Douyin took measures to reduce the number of infringing works, the infringing acts have not been effectively curbed. Therefore, Douyin belongs to the infringement of assistance, and effective measures should be taken immediately to delete, filter, and intercept relevant videos, and compensate Tencent for economic losses and reasonable expenses of more than 32.4 million yuan.
In this case, the Xi’an Intermediate People’s Court broke the national record of compensation for similar cases with a standard of 2 million yuan per episode and a total of more than 32 million yuan, which is 16 times the highest record last year and hundreds of times that of some similar cases. The amount of 32 million is also the highest compensation Tencent has ever received in a film and television copyright case. It not only exceeded three times the original claim amount of Tencent in this case, but also set a new record for compensation in online film and television copyright cases in courts across the country. For the Shaanxi court, this is the first time.
The plaintiff, Tencent, found that after “Insect Valley of Yunnan” was broadcast exclusively on Tencent Video on August 30, 2021, there were a large number of clips of the play uploaded by users on Douyin. Therefore, on September 22, 2021, a lawsuit was filed with the Xi’an Intermediate People’s Court, requiring Douyin to immediately take effective measures to delete, filter, and intercept relevant videos, and compensate for economic losses and reasonable expenses of 10 million yuan.
The case will be formally accepted by the court on October 8, 2021, and Vice President Yao Jianjun will be the presiding judge. Before the trial of the case, Tencent changed its claims and raised the claim amount to 90 million yuan.
Douyin argues that the relevant videos are uploaded by users themselves, and the platform has a large number of users, so it is impossible for Douyin to conduct substantive review of massive information; and according to the law, Douyin platform only provides information network storage services, and has no content review obligation. The platform has reminded users that the uploaded content must not infringe on the intellectual property rights of others, and has fulfilled the obligation to notify deletion, so it does not constitute infringement.
On October 26, 2022, the Xi’an Intermediate People’s Court made the first-instance judgment. The court held that Douyin should undertake corresponding management obligations for infringing content on the platform. Although it has taken measures to reduce the number of infringing works, the infringement has not been effectively curbed. Therefore, the court determined that Douyin constituted aiding infringement and required it to take immediate and effective measures to delete, filter and block relevant videos.
Taking into account factors such as the type of work involved, production cost, popularity, nature of the defendant’s infringement, and possible benefits, the court determined that the loss of economic benefits suffered by Tencent due to the infringement was an average of 2 million yuan per episode and a total of 32 million yuan, and required Douyin paid Tencent a reasonable fee of more than 420,000 yuan for rights protection. The court also pointed out in its judgment that punitive damages are not applicable in this case.
The work involved in this case, “Yunnan Insect Valley”, is a suspenseful adventure web drama produced by Penguin Film and Television, a subsidiary of Tencent. There are 16 episodes in the whole play, with a Douban score of 6.1, and more than 150,000 users marked “seen” the play.
Previously, iQIYI had sued Kuaishou for “Old Nine Gates” of Tomb Raiders, and won the final judgment in August 2022. The show has a total of 48 episodes and received 1 million yuan in compensation, with an average of more than 20,000 yuan per episode.
In fact, the compensation for “Old Nine Gates” has been relatively high. Previously, the amount of damages awarded in similar cases by local courts was only between tens of thousands and millions of yuan for the entire work.
According to the “Research Report on Related Factors of Video Cases Affecting the Compensation Amount in 2021” released by IP data analysis agency Zhichanbao, there are 2,549 publicly searchable video infringement judgments made by courts across the country in 2021. , most of the total compensation amount is concentrated in less than 50,000 yuan. Among them, the highest compensation amount for TV dramas is 2 million yuan for the 40-episode TV series “Spring Breeze is not as good as you”, that is, 50,000 yuan per episode, which is only 1/40 of this case.
The legal person in charge of Douyin said that the case will be appealed.
This article is reproduced from: https://www.leiphone.com/category/industrynews/cUcF4KeOQBQOALsM.html
This site is for inclusion only, and the copyright belongs to the original author.