Tencent claimed in court that when searching for "DNF handheld game" or "Dungeons & Dragons handheld game" in Apple's cell phone browser, even though the commercial promotion links at the top of the search results showed "DNF handheld game" or "Dungeons & Dragons handheld game", Tencent was not able to find a way to get a copy of the game. " or "Dungeons and Warriors hand tour", but the webpage URL at the top of the search results are all operated and managed by FourThreeNineNine. After clicking on it, the webpage will jump to the download page of "Fighting Hunter".
Tencent argued that the actions of Four399 were misleading the public by borrowing the Dungeons & Dragons trademark's popularity, increasing the number of downloads of its own games to raise revenue, and causing the relevant public to mistake the Dungeons & Dragons online game for the Dungeons & Dragons online game.
In this case, Tencent's legal department did not choose "game plagiarism", which is a difficult cause of action to judge and define, but rather chose trademark infringement, and ultimately obtained compensation.
In a trial, the more claims a party makes that are accepted by the judge, the higher the probability of winning, and Tencent was often able to convince the judge to accept claims that were outside the norm.
A few years ago, the Endless Duel handheld game developed by MuXi was launched overseas. In order to avoid competition with Tencent's Honor of Kings, MuXi designed a strategic and legal maneuver: the game did not go live in mainland China, but only overseas through the Apple and Google app stores.
This strategy was effective at first, as Tencent's overseas lawsuit against MuXi was dismissed by the US court on the grounds of jurisdictional conflict. This was followed by a second wave of lawsuits launched by Tencent in Shenzhen.
Normally, a Shenzhen court should not have jurisdiction over a game that has never operated in China. In order to establish a connection with the Endless Duel game in mainland China, Tencent proved that it was possible to access and log in to Endless Duel through a VPN in Shenzhen by using third-party VPN software.
Since VPN software is a regulated technology in China, and is generally only used for internal corporate offices, the legality of logging into online games with a VPN is an ambiguous area. Tencent's forensic approach has sparked a lot of controversy in the legal community.
However, the opinion was ultimately adopted by the court.
Many people suspect that there is something fishy about the high win rate of big companies in lawsuits, but in fact, big companies seal a lot of loopholes when they enter into contracts. In other words, Tencent can win, by no means only because in the court session to do enough work. Only signed contracts, Tencent can often be a one-trick pony. For example, the Tencent open platform developer agreement introduced above is enough to frame the opponent dead in the Nanshan District Court.
A centralized legal practitioner on Knowledge said that the contracts used by large companies like Tencent are structured texts, which may have been reviewed by dozens of law firms word by word, so once a dispute arises, the probability of winning the lawsuit is high.
Previously, the TV series "Chen love order" "Qing Yu Nian" in the Tencent video hit, for users who have already purchased a membership, Tencent has launched a pay to see the big ending in advance of the set, so that many people call out to be fooled. But in fact, in Tencent's relevant user agreement, it has been written: If you do not agree with the modification of this agreement, you can stop the use of this service. If you continue to use the Service, you will be deemed to have accepted all changes to this Agreement.
The user agreement for Tencent's game "Honor of Kings" also contains many such clauses, which can be said to take into account possible scenarios ahead of time, but in most cases, users don't even read them carefully. In the event of a dispute, Tencent can get away with it.
The author does not have a grasp of the composition of Tencent's legal department, but a report in 2019 about Tencent becoming the first private enterprise corporate lawyer pilot unit of the Ministry of Justice mentioned that Tencent's legal team of more than 400 people, more than half of whom have many years of experience in the practice of law, actively exploring in a number of areas such as data compliance, network security, privacy protection, etc., and engaging in the field of Internet law.
Publicly available data
Public data shows that as of the end of 2019, Tencent a*** has 62,885 employees. At first glance, it looks as if a team of a few hundred people is not that big, but this is already more than the entire employee team of many companies.
In fact, people engaged in law-related work within a large company are not necessarily all from the legal department. Tencent's senior vice president of legal affairs, Guo Kaitian, leads such an organization as the Tencent Research Institute. According to its official website, Tencent Research Institute is Tencent's think tank, which focuses on Internet law, public **** policy, Internet economy, big data and other research directions, and carries out diversified cooperation with domestic and foreign research institutions and think tanks, and constantly launches data and reports for the Internet industry to provide strong research support for academic research, industrial development and policy formulation.
The team introduction page on the official website shows that Tencent Research Institute has absorbed many people from state ministries and commissions, courts, large law firms, multinational companies, and domestic universities.
For example, Jiang Bo, vice president of Tencent's legal department, is currently the director of Tencent Research Institute's Legal Research Center. He joined Tencent in December 2011 during the 3Q war, and previously served as president of the Intellectual Property Court of the Guangdong Provincial High Court. According to an interview with Jiang Bo published in Chief Legal Officer magazine, "the battle with Qihoo 360 was far more grueling and prolonged than imagined, and the litigation team of him and the legal department of just over ten people led the progress of Tencent v. Qihoo 360 Unfair Competition and Qihoo 360 v. Tencent Monopoly".
Another researcher was engaged in civil and commercial trial work in the court for many years, with rich trial practice experience, and then joined the Tencent Research Institute, engaged in Internet legal research work, research direction for the platform responsibility, network security, network interviews, credit supervision, and so on. There is also a researcher who has served as a Beijing court judge and senior legal counsel for large Internet companies.
There are also many people from the National Copyright Administration, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Academy of Social Sciences and other organizations under the department, the research direction covers intellectual property rights, anti-monopoly, telecommunications industry policy, network security, credit regulation, etc., it can be said that the talent is abundant and strong.
Trump's "WeChat ban" gave Tencent a beautiful transnational lawsuit last year, but few people know that Tencent itself did not even participate in the first time in the lawsuit, just through the coordination of stakeholders to initiate litigation action, will be able to sit behind the scenes.
In August 2020, shortly after the release of the WeChat ban, the American Federation of WeChat Users (AFWU), a coalition of Chinese Americans, sued the Trump administration in court, arguing that the WeChat ban issued by Trump was illegal and unconstitutional. "On the eve of the ban's entry into force, a judge in California halted Trump's ban. Although the U.S. government subsequently filed motions and appealed the outcome of the case, neither changed the final outcome.
When the lawsuit was initially filed, the American Federation of WeChat Users organization had claimed it had nothing to do with Tencent. But many industry insiders said that Tencent at least maintained communication with the WeChat Users Association. Tencent joined the case as a co-litigant only after the case became clear in the first instance.
In this battle, Tencent has made its presence felt in cross-border litigation.
One last important criterion: has Tencent lost so many cases?
According to Enterprise Search's data, in recent years, cases related to Tencent have shown a year-on-year growth trend, reaching a staggering 8,595 cases in 2020, but checking the news reports, there are only a few lost cases that are more famous.
The first is the QQ trademark dispute case. In this case, although QQ chat software appeared earlier, Chery registered the QQ trademark for the automobile category first. When the two parties went to court, Chery argued that Tencent's application to register the disputed trademark was an infringement of the QQ trademark, even though Tencent knew that the QQ trademark already existed. The court ultimately upheld Chery's claim.
The other case was an infringement dispute between singer Li Zhi and the idol program "The Son of Tomorrow". The program was produced by entertainment program production company Woqiqiwa, and Tencent was jointly and severally liable as a co-producer of the program. Due to the clear facts, Tencent and Woqi Wow were awarded 200,000 yuan in damages.
Then there's the recent case of the fake Old Godmother scamming Tencent. The battle-hardened sandman failed to see through the fake Lao Ganma official seal, which is shocking.
Comprehensively, the above three cases show that the QQ trademark dispute case has been relatively long ago, and has not had a substantial impact on Tencent's main business. The dispute with Li Zhi lost money and not much.
What hurt Tencent the most was the Lao Gan Ma incident, which highlighted the problem of large companies relying on judicial means, which has been widely questioned. After the incident, Tencent took the initiative to apologize, take advantage of the situation to sell cute, but instead of a serious judicial case into a marketing event, powder a lot of passers-by, can not be considered a loss.
In summary, Tencent's legal department has performed well in eight dimensions, and is considered to be a "famous lawyer" who is good at arguing and defending from difficult angles, and has won many battles. Regardless of whether it is actively suing or passively responding to lawsuits, Tencent's Legal Department has established itself as the "Nanshan Pizza Hut" in a series of hard-fought battles. Tencent can top China's market capitalization of the largest company throne, in addition to WeChat, Tencent legal department is playing an indispensable role.