Nanyang Zuoyou Network Technology Co., Ltd. (“the Client”) opened a shop on Taobao platform and sold products through the Taobao Gacha machine applet. Tianzhi Internet Information Technology Co., Ltd. (“Tianzhi”) claimed that the Gacha machine applet in the Client’s Taobao shop copied the source code of the one developed by it. So Tianzhi filed a software copyright infringement lawsuit in court against the Client and Taobao as co-defendants. Attorney Jian HE was entrusted by the Client to provide legal services for this case.
Business Difficulties and Highlights
With different versions, the substantial similarity of code was very difficult to distinguish.
A certain method is required to compare the similarity of two pieces of code in various aspects such as semantics, syntax and program logic. Therefore, in software copyright infringement cases, determining whether the codes of the parties constitute substantial similarity is a highly professional and technically demanding task. The object of this case involved software code, and there were several different versions of the Client’s software code. Making full use of his scientific background and legal thinking, attorney HE spent a lot of time and efforts to check several different versions of the code carefully, as well as sorted out the code versions of the applet being sued. Finally, he successfully distinguished the difference between the codes of two parties and proved the innovativeness of the Client’s applet code.
Proactive submission of source code helped the court find out the facts of the case.
Different from general civil cases, infringement cases of computer software copyright are characterized by the intertwining of multiple claims and defences, as well as the difficulty of finding out facts. Attorney HE grasped the core of the case skilfully and adopted a strict and professional approach to resolve the key issue of “whether it constituted substantial similarity”. Besides, on the basis of checking and sorting out the code versions of the accused applet, he used timelines to notarize and preserve the Client’s code. Then attorney HE took the initiative to submit the source code, which helped the court to ascertain the facts of the case successfully and contributed to a fair judicial decision.
