In August of this year, a well-known Chinese publishing house was sued for using background music owned by the British company BGM without authorization. The publishing house discovered the background music through a search on the Jianying app while creating a promotional video for book sales on its JD (Jingdong, a very well-known e-commerce platform) flagship store.

Jianying is a very popular Chinese video editing app, with its international version known as CapCut. Jianying offers a large library of materials, some of which are third-party or creator-generated content, in addition to its own content. According to the “Jianying Content License Agreement”, Jianying promises to “legally and reasonably indicate the names or marks of third-party platforms and/or creators.” However, in practice, it does not provide such labeling, nor does it alert users that they need to obtain authorization before using the content. In this case, Jianying did not obtain authorization from BGM and illegally provided the background music for free download, which constitutes infringement. Similar cases, such as the Alibaba vs. Kuaishou (a highly influential short video platform in China) lawsuits, have resulted in Chinese courts holding Kuaishou responsible for compensation.

Therefore, both the publishing house and Jianying have constituted infringement separately and should bear corresponding liabilities.

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