Fairsky Represented “The Worm Valley” Dispute over Right of Information Network Dissemination and Unfair Competition
Representing the copyright owner of web series “The Worm Valley”, Fairsky lodged a civil suit against a top short video platform in China for copyright infringement. Despite the plaintiff’s repeated warnings, complaints, the lawsuit, and application for behavioral preservation, the defendant failed to take proper measures to remove all the alleged infringing short videos.
Xi’an Intermediate People’s Court heard the case and determined at its discretion that the copyright owner of the web series “The Worm Valley” suffered an average economic loss of 2 million RMB per episode due to the defendant’s infringement of the right of information network dissemination, and the total economic loss was 32 million RMB. This case has set a new record for China’s highest damages for copyright infringement of film and TV works. The determination of the infringement liability of the short video platform and the calculation of damages in this case provides strong guidance for future trials.
It is also worth noting that, with e-commerce platforms getting more mature, the Court requires that the platform should not only fulfill the “notice-delete” obligation, but also undertake more active administrative measures such as filtering and reviewing, which has set a new rule for similar cases in China.