Handled by senior partners GUO Qing and XU Ying of King&Capital Law Firm,the case of“using a web crawler to illegally obtain e-books”has been simultaneously included in the“‘Ten Classic Cases’of Judicial IPR Protection by Beijing Courts in 2020”and“Classic Cases of IPR Protection by Beijing Municipal Prosecutorial Organs in 2020”.

Among the online copyright infringement cases uncovered in Beijing in recent years,the case involves the most people,covers the most variety of works and is the most influential.It is also the only criminal case to be included by Beijing courts in the‘Ten Classic Cases’.

Commenting on the case,the Beijing High People’s Court noted that it“is a novel offence in infringing against online e-books,with new methods,targets and ways.Not only does it involve professional technical issues of promoting and operating network crawlers and self-operated APPs,but also touches on professional legal issues of gathering and evaluating electronic evidence online,e-book ownership and quantification.It is a typical case worthy of being studied.”

“The trial of this case has transcended traditional thinking in the following respects:the illegality argument of obtaining by using net crawlers;determining the form,means and legality of the conclusion in analyzing infringing works;discussion on the differences between e-books and physical hard-copy book sin collecting and identifying evidence,evaluating the nature of the evidence,quantifying the works and the assessment of harm.Many new and well-founded opinions have been put forward,in line with the realistic need to crackdown on new intellectual property offending and providing a referent in trying similar cases.”

Having accepted the victim’s entrustment in this case,the King&Capital lawyer team consulted various experts on such complex technical issues as data encryption.They guided and assisted the victim in combing through voluminous electronic evidence,protecting the parties’legitimate rights and interests to the utmost while complying with the investigative and prosecutorial organs’strict evidentiary requirements.

Lawyers GUO Qing and XU Ying have a wealth of experience in dealing with novel cases of online copyright infringement,having previously acted as defense counsel in a company’s alleged copyright infringement.In that case,a decision not to prosecute was rendered.

Other members of the lawyer team included partner JIN Yi and lawyer SUN Xun.