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Sept. 4 (NBD) -- iQiyi (Nasdaq: IQ), the Netflix of China, filed a lawsuit against the operator of news information platform Jinri Toutiao in Beijing Monday for violation of relay rights of the hot TV series Story of Yanxi Palace.

The television drama is a co-production of Huanyu Film and iQiyi Pictures, which should be exclusively broadcasted on the website and mobile terminals of iQiyi.

However, the TV drama was made into short videos on the mobile terminal of Jinri Toutiao and became a hit with each video winning over 800,000 views.

For Jinri Toutiao's infringement of the legal interests, iQiyi required the information platform to stop violating its relay rights further and claiming compensation of 30 million yuan (4.4 million U.S. dollars), according to news released by court of Haidian District of Beijing.

It is noted that short videos have become increasingly popular in China. By June 2018, active users of short videos exceeded 500 million, a year-over-year increase of 104 percent and the penetration rate hit 46 percent, which means almost half of Chinese netizens have turned into short video users.

It is noted that iQiyi is not the single platform that are plagued by copy right infringement issues.

From 2016 to January 17 of 2018, the court of Haidian District have handled up to 19 infringement cases filed by the top three online video platforms Youku, iQiyi and Tencent Video, with a total claimed compensation of 29.38 million yuan (4.3 million U.S. dollars).

China's internet content industry grossed 382 billion yuan (56.0 billion U.S. dollars) in 2016, increasing by twenty-six fold from the metric of 2006. If the industry grows at such high speed, China is expected to exceed Japan and South Korea to take the second place worldwide by 2020. 

More copyrights infringement cases are also seen in these years. According to Wu Guanyong, vice-director at the Monitoring Center of Copyright Society of China, over 50 percent of online infringement cases are related to online video copyrights violations in 2016.

Wang Ti, lawyer at the Chengdu unit of W&H Law Firm, explained to NBD that some violators may take advantage of legal loopholes, while others may be willing to take risks due to low cost of violation of law. In addition, the difficulty of identifying infringements and collecting evidence, to some extent, encourages violations.

This year, Chinese regulators have made efforts to regulate the short video industry. In July, the regulators initiated a campaign to discipline the industry, to create environment suitable for development of short video platforms. Popular platforms, such as Kuaishou, Meipai, Bilibili and pear video, are given special attention.

Email: tanyuhan@nbd.com.cn