Guangdong Higher Court made its recent final judgment on November 30 over the copyright infringement and unfair competition dispute between Guangzhou NetEase Company and Shanghai NetEase Company v. Shenzhen Miniwan Company. The court ruled unfair competition against Miniwan Company, and ordered it to delete 230 infringing elements in its video game product, and compensate 50 million yuan to NetEase Company, making it a record making amount in domestic game infringement disputes. 

Minecraft, a world popular sandbox game developed by Mojang Company back in 2009. In May 2016, NetEase announced that it had obtained the exclusive right to operate the game in China, plus the privilege to defend its rights against any intellectual property infringement and unfair competition. The same month saw Miniwan Company launched its "Mini World" app for Android, followed by the iOS and PC versions. In 2019, Netease filed a lawsuit with Shenzhen Intermediate Court, accusing Mini World of copying several core elements of Minecraft game, and that the overall graphics of the two games were highly similar, which constitutes copyright infringement and unfair competition. It appealed to the court for an immediate cease of infringement, as well as 50 million yuan damage to remove the influence. The court only accepted thee claim of copyright infringement, and ordered Miniwan Company to delete infringing game elements and compensate 21.13 million yuan to Netease Company. Both parties appealed against the ruling and brought the suit to Guangdong Higher Court. 

The Guangdong Higher Court found that both games, with sandbox element, only set the basic rules, and provide players with basic resources or elements such as wood, food and biomes, so that players can freely explore and interact with the virtual world. Players can use the preset resources to create virtual objects, buildings, landscapes and even the entire game world through destroying, synthesizing and building. "Mini World" mainly makes profits through game cards, with more than 3.36 billion downloads from various channels, and has gained more than 400 million registered users since its launch. 

The Guangdong Higher Court held that the whole graphics of the two games constitute electrical works, that is, "audio-visual works" of the new copyright law, but the similarity only lies in the design of game elements rather than graphics, so Netease's claim for copyright infringement was rejected. At the same time, the court held that "Mini World" and "Minecraft" are highly similar in game rules and have overlapping details in game elements, which has gone much further than reasonable reference. By copying the design of game elements, Miniwan Company directly grab the core business value of other’s intellectual achievements, and seize business opportunities by means of improperly obtaining other’s business interests, which constitutes unfair competition. In determining the amount of compensation, the court held that Miniwan Company, as the infringer, should be in possession of the relevant data of its operation income, but still refused to provide it with the court and failed to render justifiable reasons, hence should bear the legal consequences of unfavorable presumption. According to the superior evidence such as the download volume and income data of Mini World displayed by the third-party platform, the calculation by various methods shows that the infringement profit of Miniwan Company far exceeds the compensation amount claimed by Netease Company, so the compensation claim was eventually decided at full amount.