A court ruling has ruled that the company should fully compensate all employees who deleted the video of their 1 million followers account after leaving the company.
According to the Chinese media Maeil Business Newspaper, an employee who used to work for a software company opened a short-form video platform account with his personal information at the company’s request when he was in office. The company charged hundreds of thousands of yuan to promote the account, and the company also purchased equipment necessary for filming the video. Before leaving the company, the account had more than 800 videos related to economy, science and technology, and artificial intelligence, and about 30% of the videos featured Xiao Huang himself.
At the time of leaving the company, there was 10,000 yuan worth of virtual currency left in the account. The employee initially changed the account login number to the company’s representative number at the request of the company, but later changed it back to his number without the company’s knowledge and used the account directly.
After using virtual currency, he deleted or hid 800 videos that had been uploaded, and uploaded new videos that he appeared in person. While occupying the account, the number of followers decreased by more than 20 percent from 1.26 million to less than 1 million.
The company tried to negotiate, but he countered, “I have the right to use and profit because the account is registered under my real name.” Eventually, the company requested the court to confirm the account’s attribution, restore the deleted video, and compensate for economic losses.
The 4th Intermediate People’s Court in Beijing acknowledged that account registration was a job act and that the company invested and contributed materially to the growth of the value of the account economy. It also determined that the right to use and profit from the account belongs to the company, saying that there is no evidence to suggest that the account and the individual are strongly combined, and that the relationship with the individual’s personality is weak.
Regarding compensation for damages, the court ordered that the virtual currency used be compensated for the original amount. There is no clear standard regarding indirect losses, but data such as the number of followers and likes represent the economic value of the account, and the number of followers decreased by more than 20%, reducing the influence and commercial value of the account. In addition, it was judged that the company was unable to operate while occupying the account, which also affected its expected profits, and calculated indirect economic losses that comprehensively considered this. Finally, the court confirmed that the account belonged to the company and ruled to compensate for economic losses.
There are also rulings in the opposite direction. According to the Guangzhou Daily, the Guangzhou court completely dismissed the copyright infringement lawsuit filed by the company against its employees. The company hired it to promote its products and entrusted the planning, filming, and appearance of short-form videos. The contract stated that the copyright of the video in which Ryu participated belongs to the company. However, a labor dispute arose within a month of his tenure, and the company claimed 100,000 yuan in damages, saying that Ryu posted the company’s video on his personal TikTok account without company permission.
Ryu responded by saying, “It is a job act by producing a different version at the request of the company and posting it on a personal account for the purpose of testing the inflow.” The court ruled in favor of the employee. The time of posting the video was almost the same as the company’s official account, and the company’s work group chat records show that it is a job act to support the company’s promotional strategy. In particular, it was judged that the fact that the company’s managers and several employees liked, commented, and saved the video could be viewed as an implicit approval representing the company, not just an individual action.
SALLY LEE
US ASIA JOURNAL
