ByteDance to pay 83m yuan over plagiarism

Staff reporter

Chinese tech giant ByteDance has been ordered to pay damages of 83 million yuan (HK$88.60 million) for code plagiarism, involving eight of its products including Douyin, the mainland's version of Tiktok, according to mainland media Cailianpress.

Meishe, a Beijing-based provider of intelligent audio-visual solutions, issued a statement on its WeChat account claiming that ByteDance's apps had copied a significant amount of code related to audio and video editing functions from their own products. Those apps also include the video-editing tool Jianying and the photo-editing tool FaceU.

Meishe filed the lawsuit in 2021 and recently, a final ruling was made by China's top court awarding it damages to the tune of 82.67 million yuan.