Douyin sued Baidu for 90 million yuan, but now it has withdrawn the lawsuit

Author | Dai Runze

“Grudges” among major Internet companies are common.

Previously, Douyin and Baidu had been involved in a litigation dispute that lasted for nearly two years, which ended recently with Douyin withdrawing the lawsuit.

On February 11, the Beijing Court Trial Information Network made public the first-instance civil ruling on the unfair competition dispute between Beijing Weibo Vision Technology Co., Ltd. (Tik Tok) and Baidu Online Network Technology (Beijing) Co., Ltd.

The ruling shows that the unfair competition dispute between the plaintiff Beijing Weibo Vision Technology Co., Ltd. and the defendants Beijing Baidu Netcom Technology Co., Ltd. and Baidu Online Network Technology (Beijing) Co., Ltd. was accepted by the Haidian District People's Court of Beijing on August 10, 2020. The plaintiff Beijing Weibo Vision Technology Co., Ltd. filed an application for withdrawal of the lawsuit with the Haidian District People's Court of Beijing on October 30, 2020.

The court held that the plaintiff Beijing Weibo Vision Technology Co., Ltd.'s application to withdraw the lawsuit complied with legal provisions. In accordance with the provisions, the court ruled to allow the plaintiff to withdraw the lawsuit.

However, the ruling did not mention why Douyin suddenly withdrew the lawsuit, which everyone is concerned about.

The story goes back two years.

On the morning of April 26, 2019, Baidu sued Toutiao for unfair competition, demanding 90 million yuan in damages and requiring ByteDance to apologize on its APP and website homepage for 30 consecutive days.

At that time, Baidu said that Toutiao had stolen a large number of results from Baidu's "TOP1" search product.

ByteDance responded to Baidu's lawsuit that afternoon.

Douyin also sued Baidu for unfair competition. The amount of compensation was also 90 million yuan, and the compensation requirements were also the same. Douyin required Baidu to apologize on its homepage for 30 consecutive days.

Douyin stated that Baidu set up a Douyin column in the hot list section of the "Simple Search" App without Douyin's authorization.

According to TikTok, when users click on related videos, "simple search" will directly "jump" to the playback of popular videos on TikTok.

Douyin also stated that after "stealing" the video, Baidu erased the unique watermark of the Douyin video, and users had no idea that it was a Douyin video.

Regarding this, Douyin believes that Baidu has replaced Douyin's video content, stolen Douyin's achievements, and seized the traffic that should have belonged to Douyin.

In the lawsuit, Douyin stated that Baidu's behavior was a typical "unearned income" and "free-riding" behavior that violated recognized business ethics, as well as the principles of fairness and honesty and trustworthiness, seriously disrupting the legitimate economic order of the Internet market and constituting unfair competition.

Regarding Jiandan Search, official information shows that this is a search app developed and launched by Baidu Search in July 2017.

The official background of the creation is: "We hope to have a very simple and refreshing software that can meet the needs of users from searching to viewing web pages. We also hope that children and the elderly can use voice to search. Let everyone be able to obtain information conveniently, freely and fairly, that's all."

Robin Li also said that in order to ensure a good user experience to the greatest extent possible, Baidu’s newly launched smart search APP uses simple search and emphasizes that it will never place advertisements.

ByteDance and Baidu have previously had a feud over several rounds of public opinion wars.

On January 23, 2018, Luo Changping, a former financial media person, posted an article on his personal Weibo account stating that Baidu had set up a "leading office". Baidu subsequently denied the allegation and filed a lawsuit against Luo Changping on February 5, 2018.

On May 22, 2019, Luo Changping posted on Weibo that he had won the lawsuit against Baidu for online infringement.

According to Luo Changping's Weibo: The judgment requires Baidu to immediately delete the articles "Do you know about "Taking the Lead"? " and "This Group of Peers Is So Laughable", and to publish an apology statement in a prominent position in "This Baidu Public Relations" for ten consecutive days, to apologize to the plaintiff Luo Changping, eliminate the impact, and restore his reputation.

On the evening of June 10, 2019, Baidu issued an apology statement on the WeChat official account “This Baidu PR”.

As for Toutiao, a lawsuit was filed against Baidu for "unfair competition."

Baidu’s response not only denied Toutiao’s accusations, but also stated that Toutiao’s series of statements stemmed from “anxiety about development difficulties.”

Unfair competition has always been the focus of public opinion. Not only is there a "dispute" with Baidu, but the "Tencent-Tencent" war is also full of "gunpowder".

On June 1, 2018, Tencent announced that it had sued ByteDance and Weibo Vision in court on the grounds that the latter were suspected of unfair competition and had caused serious damage to Tencent's reputation.

At the same time, Tencent also announced the suspension of cooperation with the two companies mentioned above.

On the evening of June 1, 2018, ByteDance officially responded to this, saying: "We have filed a lawsuit against Tencent for unfair competition."

The competition between apps is also fierce.

On March 8, 2018, the links of Tik Tok and Huoshan shared to Moments may only be visible to yourself.

On March 25, 2018, Douyin videos shared on QQ space were only visible to oneself.

From April 11, 2018 to date, links shared on Xigua, Douyin, and Huoshan to WeChat and QQ cannot be played.

On May 15, 2018, pictures on Douyin personal pages were blocked from Moments.

On May 16, 2018, the Xigua Video website was marked as an unsafe website by Tencent Computer Manager.

On May 25, 2018, when sharing the link of Toutiao article on QQ Space PC, it could not be displayed normally.

On February 2, 2021, TikTok, owned by ByteDance, officially submitted a lawsuit to the Beijing Intellectual Property Court, suing Tencent for monopoly.

Douyin said that Tencent restricted users from sharing content from Douyin through WeChat and QQ, which constituted "monopolistic behavior of abusing market dominance to exclude and restrict competition" prohibited by the Anti-Monopoly Law.

Douyin asked the court to order Tencent to immediately stop this behavior, publish a public statement to eliminate the adverse effects, and compensate Douyin for economic losses and reasonable expenses of 90 million yuan.

On the evening of February 2, Tencent responded that it had not yet received relevant materials regarding the lawsuit against Douyin.

On the evening of February 2, Douyin issued another statement in response, saying that Tencent’s so-called "malicious frame-up" had no basis whatsoever.

In recent years, ByteDance's achievements have been attracting much attention.

According to The Information, citing people familiar with the matter, ByteDance's revenue doubled in 2020 to approximately US$37 billion (approximately RMB 239 billion).

Not only that, on January 18, 2021, at the same time when Pinduoduo officially announced its withdrawal from the Spring Festival Gala, Douyin officially announced that it would become the new partner of the 2021 CCTV Spring Festival Gala.

The 1.2 billion red envelopes distributed by Douyin during the 2021 CCTV Spring Festival Gala caused quite a stir.

According to official data, during the Spring Festival Gala, the total number of interactions with Douyin red envelopes reached 70.3 billion; the cumulative number of viewers in Douyin's Spring Festival Gala live broadcast room reached 1.221 billion, with a maximum of 4.9846 million people watching together.

Although the maximum number of real-time online users in the live broadcast room was lower than last year (25.24 million), the total number of red envelope interactions and the cumulative number of viewers in the live broadcast room far exceeded last year.

At the beginning of 2021, ByteDance CEO Zhang Nan said that Douyin has evolved from a form of entertainment to a form of social interaction, and may become a lifestyle in the future.

Just last year, ByteDance’s actions made many industry insiders say that it had “big ambitions.”

At the beginning of last year, it joined hands with Huanxi Media to purchase the copyright of "Lost in Russia" and broadcast it for free on Xigua Video. In June, it officially established an e-commerce department and an independent brand "Dali Education". There was also news that it would establish a "local direct business center" to enter the local life business.

Many people have speculated about these series of actions. Do these indicate that ByteDance has already entered the heartland of Internet giants in various industries?

At this point, ByteDance’s future development trends are bound to attract much attention.

The “grudges” among big companies in the vast ocean of the Internet will also take time to slowly provide answers.

References:

1. https://tech.163.com/21/0213/12/G2NFSQ9500097U7R.html#f=techrank

2. https://finance.sina.com.cn/tech/2021-02-13/doc-ikftpnny6605390.shtml

3. https://baijiahao.baidu.com/s?id=1691580055814608982&wfr=spider&for=pc

4. https://finance.ifeng.com/c/83pIxkr7PFn

5. https://36kr.com/p/1090378619357956

6. https://tech.ifeng.com/c/83nYyL44NEZ