Court Upholds Lawsuit Filed by ByteDance against Tencent over Monopolistic Practices
Feb 8 2021 · 12:30 UTC | Updated
Feb 8 2021 · 12:47 by Steve Muchoki · 3 min read
Photo: Depositphotos
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Tencent has, however, vehemently denied the claims by ByteDance and said they are only meant to cause defamation.
Over the weekend, the Beijing Intellectual Property Court accepted a lawsuit filed by ByteDance Ltd against Tencent Holdings Ltd (HKG: 0700) over monopolistic practices.
According to the lawsuit, ByteDance alleges that Tencent has been denying Douyin – a Chinese version of TikTok- access to WeChat and QQ content sharing capabilities. The two tech rivals have seen their business operations scale during the pandemic, thus attracting huge attention from regulators on the market competitiveness.
In the past, few plaintiffs have successfully won cases relating to abuse of market dominance, says an analyst. The legal environment for monopoly cases could be set for change after Beijing named antitrust as one of its top agenda issues for 2021. SCMP
ByteDance and Tencent Holdings, China’s largest players in content, entertainment and social media, have been engaged in a public battle since 2019 when WeChat, Tencent’s social network and messaging app, blocked links to Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok.
Since then both sides have traded barbs in public but ByteDance just upped the stakes in what could become a landmark case in China’s antitrust case law as Beijing tightens antitrust regulations, say analysts.