Tencent vs ByteDance Internet Giants Legal Battle in China

Published 03 Feb.2021 11:30(KST)

ByteDance Files Lawsuit Against Tencent for Abuse of Monopoly Position
Tencent Countersues ByteDance for Misuse of WeChat User Information

[Asia Economy Beijing=Special Correspondent Jo Young-shin] Tencent, China's largest internet company, and ByteDance, the fastest-growing internet company in China, have entered into a legal battle.

According to Chinese media such as Caixin on the 3rd, ByteDance, which operates the short video platform Douyin, filed a civil lawsuit against Tencent at the Beijing Intellectual Property Court the day before. Douyin is the Chinese regional service of TikTok, which is widely known worldwide, with over 500 million users.

[Image source=Yonhap News]

ByteDance's issue is Tencent's policy of blocking the sharing of Douyin links on WeChat (the Chinese version of KakaoTalk), known as China's "national messenger."

ByteDance claims that this act constitutes a restriction of competition through abuse of monopoly position as defined by antitrust law and demands 90 million yuan (approximately 15.5 billion KRW) in damages.

Since 2018, WeChat has applied technical restrictions preventing users from sharing Douyin links. Because of this, if WeChat users want to share Douyin videos with friends, they must first download the video to their smartphones and then share the video again on WeChat, going through a cumbersome process.

[Image source=Reuters Yonhap News]

Tencent, on the other hand, stated that ByteDance previously obtained and misused users' personal information on WeChat through improper means and announced plans to file a countersuit against ByteDance.

In 2018, ByteDance also filed a lawsuit against Tencent at the Beijing court for unfair competition, but it was dismissed. ByteDance's decision to bring this issue back to court appears to be an effort to leverage the fact that antitrust has emerged as the top policy priority of Chinese authorities.