[Court Docket No.] 1987, first instance (初), civil case (民), (2019) Zhejiang Hangzhou Railway Transport Court (浙8601)

STATEMENT OF THE CASE AND FACTS

Shenzhen Tencent Computer System Co., Ltd. and Tencent Technology (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd. ("two Plaintiffs"), have jointly developed and operated the personal WeChat products, which provides consumers with instant social communication services. Zhejiang Sodao Network Technology Co., Ltd. and Hangzhou Juketool Technology Co., Ltd. ("two Defendants") developed and operated the "Juketool Group Control Software", which used the Xposed plug-in technique to nest the "personal account" function module in the software into the personal WeChat products, providing assistance to WeChat users who had purchased the software service to carry out business marketing and management activities on personal WeChat platforms. The two Plaintiffs claimed that the two Defendants had obtained and used the data in question without authorization, which had constituted unfair competition, and thus appealed to the court. The Hangzhou Railway Transport Court held that the data on internet platforms should be divided by the data resources as a whole and as single data individuals, while an internet platform party could enjoy different data rights and interests. The relevant acts of the two Defendants had endangered the data security of WeChat products, violated relevant legal provisions and business ethics, and constituted unfair competition acts. The Hangzhou Railway Transport Court ordered the two Defendants to immediately stop the unfair competition acts and jointly compensate the two Plaintiffs for economic losses and reasonable expenses, a total of RMB 2.6 million.

ANALYSIS

This case is the first in China involving the determination of the rights and interests of WeChat data. As a key production factor of the digital economy, data has become an important resource for fierce market competition, and the ownership of data rights and interests, the boundaries of rights, and how the impropriety of data capturing behaviors should be judged are widely concerned by the society. In this case, the judgment has managed to strike a balance between the interests of all parties, and provided a rational basis for the analysis of the judicial protection of data rights and interests, as well as a judicial example for building rules on data ownership and improving the legal system of the digital economy. Furthermore, it is of positive significance to prevent data monopoly and promote the innovative development of the digital economy.