Background

The plaintiff operates the Kuaishou short video APP. The short videos downloaded by users from the platform will have two parts added by the plaintiff, consisting of the "Kuaishou logo" and the "uploader's Kuaishou account" composed of watermarks.

The APP involved in the case developed and operated by the defendant has the function of removing watermarks from short videos, and it is a paid function.

The plaintiff believed that the defendant’s behavior infringed upon its registered trademark rights and constituted unfair competition, so it sued the defendant and claimed economic losses of 500,000 yuan.

Defense Opinions

First, the online watermark removal function is realized by using web crawler technology to directly capture the address where the plaintiff stores unwatermarked videos and provide link conversion for the interface. Download the video without watermark by modifying the address. As long as the plaintiff has not prohibited others from grabbing platform data through the robots agreement, the plaintiff's above actions do not constitute infringement.

Second, the company is small and does not pose a threat to the plaintiff’s business.

The first type of evidence is evidence related to Kuaishou’s popularity, influence, download volume, prohibition of web crawlers, etc.

Mainly award certificates, advertising photos, media reports, download status, platform service agreements, etc., used to prove:

The second type of evidence is related to the defendant’s infringement behavior Evidence mainly includes:

The third type of evidence is judicial recommendations.

The plaintiff submitted Judicial Recommendation No. 1 of Beijing Internet Court Mutual Legal Construction (2019), confirming that the court determined that the nature of watermarks is to indicate identity attributes, mark producer and disseminator information, and become a use in the short video industry Conventionally, it should be recognized as rights management information.

The fourth type of evidence, evidence related to the calculation of economic losses, mainly includes:

In addition to raising objections to the 8.6 billion downloads, the defendant believes that the data may be fraudulent. , has no objection to the application of the app involved.

Court decision

First, adding a watermark falls within the scope of the plaintiff’s independent business rights.

Second, other operators should not eliminate or change the above watermarks without reasonable reasons.

The court held that the defendant’s removal of the watermark hindered the normal operation of the Kuaishou app, infringed upon the plaintiff’s interests as an operator and obtained benefits accordingly, constituting unfair competition. As for the defendant's argument that the plaintiff did not restrict others from grabbing data through the robots protocol, the court held that it was not enough to prove the legitimacy of the plaintiff's behavior and did not accept it.

Third, regarding the plaintiff’s claim for economic losses, the court believed that the evidence provided by the plaintiff was difficult to prove its actual losses and the defendant’s profits. Therefore, it comprehensively considered the download volume, continuous operation time, and charging standards of the defendant’s app involved in the case. , and the app is not only for Kuaishou short videos, etc., the amount of compensation corresponding to economic losses is determined to be RMB 80,000.

The plaintiff launched a batch of rights protection against watermark removal apps during the same period. The relevant claims and evidence were basically the same as in this case. However, the defendants’ behavior patterns and defenses were different. The court determined the relevant proportion of the compensation amount. There are also big differences. You can find some interesting cases to look at tomorrow.