The most popular social media app WeChat, developed by Chinese Internet giant Tencent, has issued a report recently, committing to enhance IP proteciton. Wechat has totally 650 million users, including more than 10 million public accounts.
The WeChat team received more than 22,000 complaints about public accounts in 2015, of which 13,000 concerned IP issues, and 12,000 complaints about individual accounts, of which about 200 concerned IP.
Trademark infringements accounted for the majority of complaints, of which about 90% were about unauthorized use. The company handled more than 17,000 complaints about counterfeit goods last year, 7,400 of which were confirmed by trademark owners. More than 7,000 WeChat accounts selling fake goods were shut down.
WeChat had launched a trademark protection mechanism since 2015, which involves about 40 trademark right owners covering more than 100 brands, including well-known international brands such as LV and Chanel.
In the copyright domain, 61% of the complaints about public accounts involved written works, while 67% of the complaints on individual accounts were about photography.
An originality declaration function allowing authors to set limitations on sharing was introduced on Jan 23, 2015, which automatically checks the originality of submitted content by comparing it with prior work. The mechanism has recorded more than 5 million authorized shares.
The WeChat's IP team will block or erase the infringing content upon finding an infringment and the publisher will be given a warning or in more severe cases have restrictions on the account. In certain cases the WeChat account will be canceled completely.
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