Anjuke Accused Beike of Unfair Competition, Asking for Compensation of 90 Million Yuan

 room for rent

Anjuke accused Beike of unfair competition, claiming Beike misappropriated its photos of properties, which was accepted by Beijing Intellectual Property Court.

The plaintiffs Shanghai Ruijia Information Technology Co., Ltd. and Ruiting Network Technology Co. stated that Ruijia was the legal operator of the PC and mobile (APP and WAP included) devices of Chinese real estate information service platform Anjuke. Ruiting provided technological support for Anjuka and owned the copyright and legal right of use for the contents on the website. The new property sector on Anjuke was designed to introduce the new real estate projects which were ready to sell. The photo albums on the website provided a more comprehensive overview of the real estate for the users, the photos of which were taken on site and submitted to the website by the operators. As a result, Anjuke won a great amount of attraction among the relevant customers for its comprehensive information and detailed contents, including photos.

The defendant Beike was a real estate information service website affiliated to Lianjia, which was a trade competitor of the plaintiff. In July 2018, it was found by the plaintiff that there were a large number of photos originated from Anjuke appropriated in the new property sector of Beike, large quantities of which were tagged with watermarks of Beike instead of Anjuke. According to the plaintiff’s statement, this action severely violated the principle of good faith and caused cost of interests to itself, which constituted unfair competition.

Based on the evidence, the court was requested by the plaintiff to judge the accused of stopping their unfair competition, namely, the actions of copying and using photos originated from Anjuke on Beike. The defendants were sentenced to compensate the plaintiff with 90 million Yuan for economical cost and publish their apologies on a highlighted sector on the WAP site and APP homepage of Beike to explain the fact and eliminate the adverse effect. The overall notary fees, counsel fees and legal expenses should be covered by the defendants.

The case is still under investigation at present.

May 24, 2019

Source: Beijing IP Wechat Account

Photo from: 6199pic.com