Yangcheng Evening News Media Reporter Dong Liu Correspondent Zhang Yuanping Chen Zhongshan
Today (April 20), the Guangdong Higher People's Court issued for the first time the top ten anti-unfair competition and anti-monopoly cases in the Internet field. Among them, the case of Shenzhen Weiyuanyuan Company v. Tencent Company over abuse of dominant market position was selected.
The plaintiff Shenzhen WeChat Source Software Development Co., Ltd. sued the defendant Tencent Technology (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd. to ban the 26 WeChat official accounts opened by the plaintiff on the WeChat official account platform without the plaintiff’s permission, believing that the defendant is prohibited The plaintiff’s use of the legally obtained WeChat official account was an abuse of market dominance and constituted a monopoly.
Regarding the use function and purpose of the WeChat official account, the plaintiff stated that it was mainly used for its promotion and agency sales. It believed that the relevant products involved in this case were platforms for the promotion of software and services. In terms of the definition of the relevant market, the plaintiff claimed that "Mobile Internet Instant Messaging and Social Platform Service Market".
The effective judgment of the Shenzhen Intermediate People’s Court held that the “product” directly pointed to by the disputed actions of the plaintiff and the defendant was the official account service provided by WeChat software. Therefore, the product involved in the dispute was “WeChat Official Account” instead of “WeChat Official Account”. ". The identity of the plaintiff is not an ordinary WeChat user, but the subject of registration and operation of the WeChat official account.
The relevant commodity market in this case should be an Internet platform online promotion service market, channels that can meet the main needs of the plaintiff’s product promotion and promotion, such as self-owned websites, Weibo, video platforms such as Youku, search engine service platforms, and social networking sites such as Qzone Etc. should be included in the relevant commodity market of this case.
In the case of the wrong definition of the relevant commodity market, the plaintiff also failed to prove that the defendant has a dominant market position and abuses in accordance with the legal requirements, so the judgment rejected all the plaintiff's claims. The parties did not appeal after the judgment of the first instance of the case.
The court stated that monopoly disputes surrounding Internet services should start from the product to which the litigation is specifically directed, conduct demand substitution analysis from the perspective of the demander, and conduct demand substitution analysis based on the demander’s actual demand for the functional purpose of the product. Only by accurately distinguishing the activities of the company can it more accurately reflect the scope of the commodity market.
The judge in this case accurately clarified the commodity functions and characteristics between the different services of the Internet basic platform,Defining the relevant market based on the specific service to which the controversial action is being sued fully reflects the judgment orientation of prudently defining and maintaining the normal operating order of the Internet platform.
Source: Jinyang.com
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