On February 13th, mainland China’s leading provider of intelligent audio-visual solutions, Meishe Technology, announced on their official account that they have won a lawsuit against ByteDance, the parent company of popular app TikTok, and 8 other products for code plagiarism. After three years and seven months, the final judgment has been reached recently.
The second-instance judgment ordered TikTok and its affiliated companies to immediately cease infringing on the copyright of Meishe’s SDK software, apologize to Meishe, and stop infringing on Meishe’s technical secrets. The total compensation for economic losses and reasonable expenses in all cases amounts to approximately 82.668 million yuan.
According to the details released by Meishe Technology, in May 2021, they discovered that the code of TikTok’s video editing functions had extensively copied Meishe’s SDK software, which led to further analysis revealing that other products under ByteDance, such as Jianying, Jiquang Creativity, Faceu, Tuchong, Qingyan Camera, Duoshan, and Volcano Engine VESDK, also had software code plagiarism issues.
Meishe filed lawsuits against these 8 suspected infringing software products for violating computer software copyright to the Beijing Intellectual Property Court and Beijing High Court. They also filed a lawsuit with the Beijing High Court against TikTok and a specific employee for infringing on their technical secrets.
The first-instance rulings were announced at the end of June 2023 and May 2024, which found TikTok and its affiliated companies guilty of infringing on Meishe’s SDK software copyright, leading to an order for a formal apology and compensation totaling about 26.704 million yuan. Both parties appealed to the Supreme People’s Court of China.
The recent final judgment upheld the infringement determination of the first instance while adjusting the compensation amount upwards. The second-instance judgment ordered TikTok and its affiliated companies to cease infringing Meishe’s SDK software copyright, apologize, and stop infringing on Meishe’s technical secrets. The total compensation was set at approximately 82.668 million yuan.
Meishe Technology stated that the main ruling of the second-instance judgment determined that TikTok and its affiliated companies had contact with an employee who had access to Meishe’s software code, resulting in the infringement of their technical secrets.
TikTok’s Vice President, Li Liang, responded on February 13th, stating that, “The employee in question was a former engineer at Meishe, and during his tenure at ByteDance after leaving Meishe, he reused a portion of the code he had written while working at Meishe.”
After the above information was disclosed, it sparked discussions among netizens.
“Mr. Du Loves Talking”: It’s very rare for a small company to successfully sue a big company for technical disputes. The part about copying the wrong code reminds me of copying someone else’s name during homework.
“Wandering Evil”: Blaming it on the employee is quite tasteless. It just happened that they hired an ex-employee who had written similar code in the same industry before?
“Flower without Edge”: Copying code and even making spelling errors. Losing in the first trial and shamelessly appealing.
“Internet Troll No. 1”: Involving so many software products, it must be a core capability. With such strong reusability of skills, there’s no way they didn’t notice the code CR, haha, it’s really something.
“Such a Hassle”: Compensation of only 80 million?? ByteDance earns two to three hundred billion in a year.
“Humble Alien Bro 3”: Does that employee count as a corporate spy?
“Cloud Fly 200801”: Shouldn’t this employee be sentenced?
“Thai Medical Translation”: Nobody in China is afraid, after all, there are no Americans involved.
According to Tianyancha, Beijing Meishe Network Technology Co., Ltd. was established in 2014, with Zheng Pengcheng as their legal representative. Through equity penetration, the largest shareholder of the company is China Digital Video Holdings Co., Ltd.
Business information shows that China Digital Video Holdings Co., Ltd., formerly known as New Optics Silicon Valley Video Technology Co., Ltd., was established in 1990. In 2015, China Digital Video Holdings Co., Ltd. was registered in Hong Kong, and in 2016, it went public on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.