TikTok’s Chinese counterpart Douyin filed a lawsuit against WeChat’s parent company Tencent at the Beijing Intellectual Property Court on February 2. Douyin is suing Tencent for monopolistic practices. This represents the first domestic anti-monopoly lawsuit between Internet platforms since the introduction of regulations at the end of 2020.
Douyin has said that Tencent has been violating the Anti-Monopoly Law by restricting users from sharing Douyin’s content through WeChat and QQ. The Law prohibits “monopoly behaviour that abuses market dominance and eliminates or restricts competition”. Douyin filed for 90 million RMB of compensation and asked the court to order Tencent to immediately stop such behaviour.
In response, Tencent’s statement claimed that it had not received relevant materials from ByteDance (Douyin’s founder) and that the allegations were purely false and malicious. Tencent also stated that many of ByteDance’s platforms, including Douyin, illegally obtained personal information from WeChat users.
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