Riot Games sues ByteDance’s Mutong Technology Infringement Case Rejected by Court

Image source: Mutong Technology official website

Reporter | Xiao Fang

Recently, Tencent’s Riot Games sued Mutong for infringement by the Central District Court of California, and the court finally dismissed the plaintiff Riot Games’ lawsuit. 

In May of this year, Riot Games filed a lawsuit against Mutong in the United States on the grounds of alleged intellectual property infringement, accusing Mutong’s game product “Mobile Legends: Bang Bang” of plagiarizing the user interface, character design and promotional materials from “League of Legends” and other elements.

After the trial, the court held that, since Riot and Tencent freely used each other’s copyrighted works in their respective games, and Tencent refused to fully participate in the lawsuit, it was impossible to clarify the copyright ownership of specific game elements, allowing Riot and Tencent to simultaneously initiate a dual lawsuit against Mu Tong. Line litigation is unfair.

The court said that the role of Mu Tong’s alleged plagiarism in this case, which Riot alleged, also had similarities in Tencent’s game “Honor of Kings”. For example, in the images below, the characters of all three games use an overall color scheme with blue and yellow.

League of Legends on the left, MLBB in the center, and Honor of Kings on the right

In the Court’s view, the issue of fairness was very important in this case. The court stated: “Neither this court nor the defendant Mu Tong can rely on partial statements and articles to resolve intellectual property issues. If this lawsuit is to be carried out in the United States, Mu Tong should have the right to obtain complete evidence. But obviously, Given that Tencent is not within the court’s subpoena power, this court cannot protect Mu Tong’s rights and interests.”

This case is another litigation confrontation between Tencent and Mu Tong. In September of this year, Mutong Technology sued Tencent for commercial defamation disputes, and the final judgment was recently announced. The Shanghai Intellectual Property Court determined that Tencent constituted commercial slander, and ordered it to compensate the plaintiff Mutong Technology for economic losses and reasonable expenses totaling 220,000 yuan, and to clarify the commercial slander involved in the case in writing.

Mutong Technology was established in 2014 and has achieved remarkable results in the Southeast Asian game market. Its “Endless Showdown”, which was launched in June 2016, surpassed Tencent’s “Honor of Kings” in the Southeast Asian MOBA (multiplayer online tactical competitive game) market and became the dominant player in many countries and regions. As of June this year, the monthly active users of “Endless Showdown” exceeded 100 million. In March 2021, Mutong Technology was acquired by ByteDance’s game business brand Chaoxi Guangnian.