Kuaishou Sues Rival Douyin for ‘Piggybacking’ on Its Name

China’s second-largest video platform claims top competitor infringed its trademark to gain more users.

Chinese video platform Kuaishou has filed a 5 million yuan ($705,000) lawsuit against Douyin, accusing its rival of “piggybacking” on the company’s user base by infringing its trademark.

According to a statement in the lawsuit, which has been accepted by Beijing’s Haidian District court, Kuaishou claims Douyin used Kuaishou’s name to link to its own product page on 360 Mobile Assistant, a third-party Android app store. The plaintiff accused Douyin — known internationally as TikTok — of infringing Kuaishou’s trademark to display its own product, prompting users to download the rival app even when they searched for Kuaishou.

Backed by tech titan Tencent, Kuaishou is China’s second-largest video-streaming platform after Douyin. In February, Kuaishou claimed it had surpassed 300 million daily active users on its Chinese app, while Douyin revealed it had over 400 million users the previous month.

ByteDance, Douyin’s parent company, told domestic media on Wednesday that it had filed its own lawsuit against Kuaishou in March over similar issue, and is looking into its rival’s latest allegations.

Paid content promotion has become common practice among many domestic search engines and other similar platforms, with both Android and Apple app stores embracing the search strategy. But this often leads users to third-party sites that profit from their personal information, raising concerns about content quality and impaired functionality.  Continue to read the full article here.

 

– This article originally appeared on Sixth Tone.