/>iIn decisions dated August 12, 2025 and August 22, 2025 from the Guangdong and Chongqing High People’s Courts, respectively, Tencent was awarded 89.1 million RMB in total in two copyright infringement cases against short video app Kuaishou. Users had repeatedly posted clips of two shows: Deyun Laughter Club (德云斗笑社) and Lost You Forever (长相思) with the latter receiving over 8.6 billion views.
On appeal, the Courts affirmed copyright infringement but increased damages substantially, awarding 60 million RMB for Deyun Laughter Club and 29.1 million RMB for Lost You Forever. This included punitive damages of 1X.
Of interest, the Courts imposed platform liability for the infringement instead of providing a safe harbor exception. The Courts held that Kuaishou was large enough and sophisticated enough to have an elevated responsibility. Kuaishou knew or should have known of the widespread infringement, especially with Tencent’s multiple takedown requests.
The full decisions, courtesy of 知产库, are available here (Chinese only).
