Beijing: Chinese video gaming behemoth Tencent Holdings will go on trial on Tuesday to face copyright infringement charges from a subsidiary of rival ByteDance, according to an updated schedule on the website of the Shanghai Intellectual Property Court.
Tencent infringes on rights to its hit video game Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, which is especially popular in Southeast Asia, according to Shanghai Moonton Technology. Authorship, reproduction, and communication of title are among the alleged violations.
The game's popularity helped Monton top the list of overseas users, making it one of China's most successful gaming studios outside the country's borders.
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Tencent, whose Honor of the Kings is one of the highest paying titles in the world, has taken note. Tencent attempted to acquire Moonton but was outbid last year by ByteDance, which was expanding its gaming operations to compete with its Shenzhen-based rival.
The upcoming court case is the latest salvo in a bitter gaming dispute between the two companies. Tencent claimed in a previous lawsuit, which is still pending, that Mobile Legends infringed on its intellectual property in Honor of Kings and League of Legends.
A California court this month dismissed a lawsuit by Tencent subsidiary Riot Games that accused Monton of infringing on content and promotional collateral from the mobile game League of Legends: Wild Rift.
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As the saga unfolds, Beijing has imposed regulatory restrictions on China's video game industry. Tencent went 15 months without obtaining any license for new games to be sold in China. ByteDance got a new license a few months back.
Nonetheless, Tencent has far deeper pockets than TikTok owner ByteDance. Honor of Kings remains particularly profitable, earning US$190 million on Apple's App Store and Google Play in September, according to Sensor Tower.
According to AppMagic data, Honor of Kings earned US$1.99 billion in the same month this year, while Mobile Legends earned only US$132.2 million as of August.
Moonton was founded in Shanghai in 2014 by Xu Zhenghua, a former game producer at Tencent. Two years later, the company released Mobile Legends. It has grown steadily since then, but it is not available in China.
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Montan's eventual acquisition of ByteDance for $4 billion was the largest in China's video game industry. Tencent made its allegations against Montan before the acquisition, but the legal battle has heated up since then.