This article is reproduced from IT House. IT House reported on February 22 that the Fujian Higher People's Court has filed a trial on the "Tik Tok v. Tencent Unfair Competition" case with the case number (2021) Min Min Judgment No. 26.
On September 17, 2019, Douyin-related operating companies filed an unfair competition lawsuit against Tencent-related companies, claiming that Tencent used technical means to restrict users from freely sharing Douyin on WeChat, WeChat Moments, QQ and Qzone. It constitutes unfair competition, and requires the lifting of restrictions, elimination of the impact, and compensation of 90 million yuan in losses.
Later, Tencent filed a jurisdictional objection to this case. Tencent believes that the case should be heard in the relevant court in Shenzhen, which is the jurisdiction agreed in the contract. The court approved this method of agreement.
The case was ruled by the Fuzhou Intermediate People's Court in December 2020, and determined that the jurisdiction of the case should be in accordance with the WeChat and QQ developer agreements, and vested in the court where the agreement was signed. According to the subject matter of this case, the Fuzhou Intermediate Court will transfer the case to the Shenzhen Intermediate Court for trial. However, Douyin did not agree with the ruling.
Bytedance filed an appeal with the Fujian Higher Court earlier this month. According to the "Notice of Acceptance of Cases" issued by the court, the Fujian Higher People's Court decided to file the case for trial on February 19, and the case number is (2021) Min Min Judgment No. 26.
According to Douyin’s appeal petition, Douyin believes that this case is an unfair competition dispute. The infringement claimed by Douyin has nothing to do with the performance of the WeChat and QQ open platform developer agreements. The Tencent developer agreement stipulates jurisdiction that does not apply to infringement and unfair competition. The lawsuit, the agreement cannot be the basis for determining the jurisdiction of this case.
IT Home has learned that after the first-instance ruling of this case was reported by the media, it has aroused social concern, and even some disputes have appeared in the legal profession.
According to similar cases in the past, some cases involving contractual relations were also heard by the court in unfair competition disputes, such as the former Tencent v. Duoshan case. In the aforementioned case, Tencent sued Doxan in Tianjin on the grounds that the QQ/WeChat operator was in Tianjin. The court accepted and issued an injunction prohibiting users from using WeChat avatars and nicknames in Doxan.
On February 7, Zhang Weiping, a professor of Tsinghua University Law School and chairman of the Civil Procedure Law Research Institute of the Chinese Law Society, a famous civil procedure expert, discussed the case in Beijing. The experts believed that the Fuzhou Intermediate People's Court has the jurisdiction over the case.
Expert Zhang Weiping believes that Douyin's claim is against unfair competition. The lawsuit based on the claim for anti-unfair competition should be governed by infringement disputes. The Fuzhou Intermediate People's Court has jurisdiction and does not need to be transferred to jurisdiction.
"According to the provisions of my country's Civil Procedure Law on the jurisdiction of tort disputes, the Fuzhou Intermediate Court is the court where the infringement was carried out and the result of the infringement occurred. It has jurisdiction over this case and does not need to be transferred to jurisdiction." Expert Zhang Weiping said, "even if the court considers the plaintiff The claim cannot be established, and it can only be judged to lose the lawsuit. It cannot substantively exceed the claim and the corresponding legal relationship claimed by the plaintiff without legal procedures, and change the jurisdiction of the case on this basis."