In 2008, the Coral QQ case, the most influential copyright infringement case in the IT industry at that time, attracted much attention and caused a great sensation.
The background of the earliest emergence of third-party QQ is that when Tencent was expanding wildly, many netizens complained that the official QQ was bloated, had too many ads, too many plug-ins, and various settings that made users dissatisfied. As a result, many third-party QQs appeared. They were small in size, ad-free, and even had many functions such as displaying friends’ IPs. In addition to the most popular QQ at that time, there were also Piaoyun, Kuangren, Chuanmei, Yumu Linfeng, etc. , but so many third-party QQs have taken away a large number of Tencent’s users and seriously damaged Tencent’s advertising interests.
So, in August 2006, Tencent took Coral QQ to court. This vigorous lawsuit has cast a lot of doubts on Tencent. But the fall of Coral also caused a sudden change in the entire third-party QQ production camp. The authors of Piaoyun and FreePlus QQ have successively announced their withdrawal from QQ production. Tencent also issued a statement to major download sites, requesting the removal of various modified versions of QQ.
"This is an act of burning bridges!" Supporters of Chen Shoufu, the creator of Coral software, have accused Tencent of being "unkind" on the Internet, and have also set up a website called "Help Shoufu" to express their support and call for support. Everyone found evidence of Chen Shoufu's innocence. "Tencent used Coral QQ to occupy the market. After completing its market share goal, it began to use methods including litigation to try to drive Coral QQ out of the market in order to achieve the commercial goal of final market share!"
In any case, all arguments ended in Tencent’s victory. Tencent used the most powerful attack to serve as a warning to others, forcing infringing third-party versions to withdraw from the market.
Recently, Tencent has enabled the second-level domain name tuan.qq.com as a group-buying service domain name, quickly following up on the increasingly heated "group-buying" business, causing a large number of group-buying website entrepreneurs to appear in recent months. "Uneasy", Tencent has therefore become the focus of attention in the information technology industry. "Computer World" used a very explosive title and cover to conduct a special report on Tencent. The report described Tencent's repeated behavior of "tracking, imitating, and catching up from behind," and then "mercilessly crushing" companies that were in the position of pioneers. Big attack.
Such a Chinese Internet company with a market value of more than HK$250 billion, over 100 million users, and a wide range of industrial layouts can be said to be a leader in the industry, but it has been identified by angry peers as "only knows how to imitate, but does not know how to innovate." How does Tencent, the "penguin", use intellectual property rights to protect the cities it has conquered and the lands it has plundered?
1,771 invention patent applications are being published or authorized
The reporter conducted a patent search through the website of the State Intellectual Property Office. The patentee was "Tencent Technology (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd.",* **There are 1,744 invention patents, 1 utility model patent and 1 design patent; the patentee is Tencent Technology (Beijing) Co., Ltd., and there are 27 invention patents. Tencent *** has 1,771 invention patent applications for authorization or disclosure. In contrast, in terms of invention patent applications that have been published or authorized, Beijing Sogou Technology Development Co., Ltd. has 143, and Baidu Online Network Technology (Beijing) Co., Ltd. The company has 35 cases, Beijing Sohu New Era Information Technology Co., Ltd. has 4 cases, and Sina Technology (China) Co., Ltd. has 2 cases.
On the first page of the search results list, there is a patent application that is being published "Device and method for preventing players from cheating in network communication games". The application date is September 4, 2006, and it is published ( Announcement) date is March 12, 2008. This patent application is related to the "QQ Game" product. The abstract mentions, "This invention...can prevent some players from cheating at a table, and can also avoid cheating and deceiving other players by watching information." And another company Beijing Lianzhong Computer Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Lianzhong Company), a company mainly engaged in online casual games, has no patents in this regard. As we all know, Lianzhong Company was a pioneer in online chess and card games. Later, their "Lianzhong Game Hall" was surpassed by "QQ Game" and the company almost collapsed. This case is also an example of Tencent’s ruthless overtaking from behind.
Similar to this are "a method and system for implementing a personal homepage (200610165899.8)", "an e-commerce transaction method and system (200710123665.1)", "a method for downloading network resources, "Systems and Equipment (200710077260.9)" and other pending patent applications, which represent Tencent products such as QQ Space, Tenpay, and QQ Tornado. Behind almost every public or authorized patent application owned by Tencent, there is the shadow of one or several peers who have been imitated, chased, or even pushed to the edge - portal personal blogs, Alipay, Xunlei and Kuaiche... … No matter what the market position looks like, when Tencent steps in, every competitor gets nervous.
Tencent's step-by-step strategy is extremely stable and rarely makes mistakes. Despite its astonishing financial resources, Tencent has never followed "international practice" in acquiring small and medium-sized companies that are the first to develop innovative products. Instead, it has followed its opponents step by step, observed market reactions, and launched its own products when the time is right. Products that are closer to user needs. Although Tencent has never been the first to eat crabs, it is the one who puts the most abundant food on the table and knows best how to use intellectual property rights to protect its dishes from being taken away by others.
More than a thousand trademarks have been registered to protect the QQ brand
Not only patents, Tencent also pays attention to the protection of trademarks. The reporter conducted a trademark search on the China Trademark Network of the Trademark Office of the State Administration for Industry and Commerce and learned that Tencent Technology (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd. has registered 1,269 trademarks in various trademark categories, of which 83 are related to "QQ", which is the largest single trademark. It has the largest number of registered trademark applications among products in this category.
For the "QQ" trademark, Tencent has registered almost all categories, including computer-related, medical devices and instruments, baby bottles, prosthetics, suture materials, dating agencies, food and other categories. Letters and graphics related to "QQ", such as "MQQ", "BQQ", "Q-GEN", "IQQ", etc., have also been registered as trademarks by Tencent. This shows the degree of "care" Tencent has for its core brand "QQ".
In addition, trademarks such as "Tencent", which sounds similar in sound and shape to "Tencent", and "Tencent Messenger", which forms an association with "Tencent QQ", have also been registered by Tencent. Some product names that have no development prospects in the short term have been quietly registered as trademarks by Tencent. It seems that for a company like Tencent, which is “big and attracts attention”, it is of great significance to protect its trademark and prevent its brand image from being damaged by unexpected events.
Homogeneous competition makes disputes inevitable
In November 2005, Tencent and Chery Automobile had a dispute over the right to use "QQ". "QQ" is Tencent's core product and has also become the name of a popular mini car launched by Chery Automobile Company. Tencent filed an objection to Chery's application for the "QQ" trademark to the Trademark Office of the State Administration for Industry and Commerce. This matter was met with much fanfare and little rain. In the end, neither party clearly announced the result, nor did they go to court.
Another lawsuit is not far away from now and has greater reference value. In November 2009, Tencent and Beijing Sogou Technology Development Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Sogou) sued each other for "unfair competition" in different courts due to "mutual subversion" between input method products. Sogou Company complained that Tencent maliciously induced users to delete "Sogou Pinyin Input Method" when promoting its product "QQ Pinyin Input Method"; Tencent Company complained that "Sogou Pinyin Input Method" interfered with the normal operation of "QQ Pinyin Input Method" in the background Run it and induce the user to delete the installed "QQ Pinyin Input Method". In June 2010, the Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People's Court and the Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People's Court respectively issued rulings that the defendants in both cases were required to compensate the plaintiffs in the two cases for economic losses of approximately 240,000 yuan. The result of "each playing fifty majors" is comical, and it also reflects the chaos in China's Internet industry where innovators are unable to establish their advantages and followers are trying to "muddy the water." Excessive homogeneous competition and stagnant innovation capabilities are mutually reinforcing, which has also led to many "True and Fake Kaixin.com" and "360 Kingsoft Fight"-style cases.
Tencent has a far leading number of intellectual property rights, but in the eyes of industry peers, its innovation capabilities are quite questionable.
Xiong Minghua, Co-Chief Technology Officer of Tencent, believes: "Only when a product is successfully operated can it be considered a true innovation success." Ma Huateng, founder and chairman of Tencent's board of directors, also believes that paying attention to user needs is the key to Tencent's success. Perhaps it is the thoughtful "small innovations" such as "preventing cheating", "one-click stealing of food", "client bundled mailbox" and etc. that rely on the huge number of QQ users that have made Tencent's more than a thousand patents possible, and it has also made it possible Market value of 250 billion