On March 26, IT Home reported that according to surging news reports, recently, the Guangzhou Internet Court made a first instance judgment on the case of Shenzhen Tencent Computer System Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Tencent) suing a cultural company and an Internet company for infringing the right of network dissemination of works' information and unfair competition disputes, and determined that the overall picture of the game "Glory of the King" constituted a "quasi electronic work", A cultural company's act of spreading the short video of the game "Glory of the King" constitutes an infringement on Tencent, and it needs to stop the infringement and compensate Tencent for its economic losses and reasonable expenses of 4.96 million yuan.
IT Home has learned that this case is the first case of short video infringement of multi player online competitive games (MOBA) in China, and also the first domestic judgment that MOBA games' continuous pictures are works created by similar film production methods (hereinafter referred to as "electronic works").
Tencent found that a cultural company opened the "King Glory" section under the game column of its video platform, and actively recommended the "King Glory" short video game in a prominent position. At the same time, it signed a "Game Video Program Cooperation Agreement" with several game users to share profits. In addition, the public can download a video platform APP through the "application assistant" APP operated by an online company.
Tencent believes that the continuous pictures of the game "Glory of the King" constitute a kind of electronic works, and the above-mentioned behavior of a cultural company infringes the right of Tencent to disseminate works information online. At the same time, Tencent is also the operator of the game short video business of King Glory. A cultural company has obtained huge commercial benefits by luring users to upload short videos involved in the case, which has caused great losses to Tencent's short video market and constituted unfair competition. In addition, an Internet company provided distribution and download services for a video platform, which expanded the impact of infringement and constituted joint infringement. After receiving the Lawyer's Letter, a culture company did not delete the short video related to the case.
After unsuccessful communication, Tencent will jointly sue a cultural company and an Internet company to the Guangzhou Internet Court.
Both defendants denied the infringement of Tencent's lawsuit. A cultural company argued that, first of all, the game pictures involved in the case did not constitute "electronic works", and Tencent did not enjoy copyright; Secondly, even though the game pictures involved in the case are considered as "electronic works", their copyright should belong to the game users who created the short video; Thirdly, the behavior of a cultural company will not cause any loss to the plaintiff and will not constitute unfair competition against the plaintiff; In addition, the short videos involved in the case constitute a reasonable use of the plaintiff's game; Moreover, the short videos involved in the case were uploaded and released by users themselves, and the sued video platform did not lure or encourage users, which does not constitute a joint infringement.
An Internet company believes that it is only an app store, only providing distribution services, and has no direct legal relationship with the dispute involved.
After hearing, the court held that "Glory of the King", as a multiplayer online competitive game, has rich and colorful game pictures and is inexhaustible. In the game, hundreds of millions of different lineup combinations will be generated according to different choices of existing heroes. Although the game pictures involved in the case are inexhaustible in a sense, since the game was launched, various potential pictures in the game can be displayed through different teams and different operation modes of different users. These pictures meet the constitutive requirements of works specified in Article 2 of the Regulations for the Implementation of the Copyright Law of the People's Republic of China, and are works protected by the Copyright Law of the People's Republic of China (hereinafter referred to as the Copyright Law). In addition, the scene of the game is beautifully made, with vivid characters, rich levels, originality and reproducibility. Such works, which have a series of characteristics of accompanying sound or no accompanying sound, and can be displayed by users through the game engine to mobilize the game resource database, should be considered as electronic works as a whole.
The court held that Tencent enjoyed the copyright of the game Glory of the King. Although the game users have a huge space to play, they have no creative intention when operating the game, but only use the game engine to mobilize the elements of the game resource library within the logical framework set by the game creator. This is essentially a reproduction of the game screen, and does not belong to the original work in the sense of the Copyright Law. Therefore, relevant game users do not enjoy copyright.
The court held that the defendant, a cultural company, without permission, put the short video containing the game screen of Glory of the King on a video platform for browsing and downloading by unspecified people, which constituted an infringement of Tencent's right to network dissemination of work information. The number of relevant videos uploaded by a cultural company of the defendant reached more than 300000, almost presenting all the content of the game "Glory of the King", which is not fair use. The defendant, a cultural company, recommended a large number of short videos of "King Glory" game in a prominent position on the platform interface, encouraged and induced users to upload a large number of short videos of "King Glory" game by actively inviting well-known players and recruiting talent groups, and signed a "Cooperation Agreement on Game Video Programs" with some users There is an advertising space under the short video of the game to share profits with the game users. It can be seen that the defendant, a cultural company, has obvious subjective fault in uploading infringing videos to users.
The defendant, a cultural company, encouraged, lured and helped game users to upload the short video of Glory of the King on a video platform and spread it without permission in order to profit from it. This violates the principle of good faith and business ethics, and belongs to unfair competition. However, the plaintiff Tencent could not request the defendant's cultural company to bear repeated liability for the same infringement. In addition, the defendant's network company is only the distribution platform of a video platform APP, which does not constitute infringement.
Therefore, the court decided in the first instance that the defendant, a cultural company, immediately stopped disseminating short videos containing the game screen of Glory of the King on a video platform; Compensate the plaintiff Tencent for economic losses of 4.8 million yuan and reasonable expenses of 160000 yuan; Reject other claims of the plaintiff Tencent.
"Compared with role-playing games (RPGs) with strong story background and plot settings, the continuous pictures of MOBA games are characterized by weak plot, strong interaction, and inexhaustible in a sense." Zhou Yang, the presiding judge, said, "For a long time, there has been controversy in the industry over the identification of the work types of the continuous pictures of MOBA games. The case made it clear by way of adjudication that the continuous pictures of MOBA games can be identified as electronic works, which has certain reference and reference significance for the trial of such cases in the future. "
At present, the defendant has filed an appeal.
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