The game adaptation right of "three generations, three generations and Ten Mile Peach Blossom" is controversial: sue yourself?

A few days ago, Sansheng III filed a lawsuit over his game authorization. Beijing Spring Mutual Entertainment sued author Tang Qi and Beijing Zhonglian Baiwen Investment Management Co., Ltd. to the court, demanding compensation for breach of contract damages and economic losses of more than 11 million yuan. At present, the Haidian Court of Beijing City has accepted the case.

Since the movie "Sansheng III Ten Miles Peach Blossom" was released on August 3, it has achieved a lot of box office results. Coupled with the hot topics that have been constantly popping out in major communities on the Internet,"Sansheng III" has become one of the hottest keywords in recent days. A few days ago, Sansheng III also filed a lawsuit over his game authorization. Beijing Spring Mutual Entertainment sued author Tang Qi and Beijing Zhonglian Baiwen Investment Management Co., Ltd. to the court, demanding compensation for breach of contract damages and economic losses of more than 11 million yuan. At present, the Haidian Court of Beijing City has accepted the case.

Is one of the targets of the tens of millions of claims actually his own company?

Simply put, in this case involving the game adaptation authorization dispute, the three parties involved in the case are "copyright company" Zhonglian Baiwen,"author" Tang Qi, and "second-hand copyright company" Spring Mutual Entertainment. However, after a mobile game matrix investigation, it was found that the parent company of the plaintiff Spring Mutual Entertainment was Beijing Zhonglian Baiwen Culture and Media Co., Ltd.(hereinafter referred to as Zhonglian Culture), and one of the defendants was Beijing Zhonglian Baiwen Investment Management Co., Ltd.(hereinafter referred to as Zhonglian Investment). The owners of the two companies were the same person.

Spring Mutual Entertainment's shareholder information

What is the reason for this self-accusation? To understand the reason for this, we must start with the copyright dispute over Sansheng III's IP.

It is reported that the trigger for this case was Tang Qi's Weibo posted in April 2017. On Weibo, Tang Qi claimed that her signature was falsely used and denied the authenticity of all authorization documents she had signed. Tang Qi's entrusted lawyer also issued a lawyer's statement stating that due to long-term and repeated substantive breaches of contract by Zhonglian Culture, Tang Qi formally terminated the entrusted contract between it and the company in accordance with legal provisions.

The left-handed journey of game copyright

As early as August 2015, Tang Qi and China United Investment entered into the "Sansheng III Ten Miles Peach Blossom Peripheral Development Agreement", stipulating that the latter would have exclusive rights to develop and produce online dramas, stage dramas, games and their derivatives and other peripheral products, and the authorization period is two years. This is a large piece of authorization, including online dramas, games and peripherals, which are the bulk of IP commercial monetization. Therefore, after the agreement was concluded, China United Investment paid Tang Qi the guaranteed fee for game and derivative development in accordance with the agreement.

In August 2016, China United Investment and Tang Qi entered into a supplementary agreement, agreeing to transfer the game adaptation rights and game derivative development rights to Spring Mutual Entertainment. The original agreement was based on the game adaptation rights and game derivative development rights. All rights and obligations arising from the game adaptation rights and game derivative development rights are fulfilled by Spring Mutual Entertainment. In other words, Sansheng III's IP adaptation rights were transferred from Zhonglian Investment to a subsidiary of Zhonglian Culture.

What is the purpose of this? Is Tang Qi's subsequent termination of the contract related to it? We don't know.

Tell yourself that it is not an uncommon capital phenomenon

. Due to the termination of the contract, some game partners terminated their cooperation with Spring Mutual Entertainment, which has seriously affected the ongoing and planned cooperation planning industry. Spring Mutual Entertainment believed that Tang Qi's refusal to fulfill his obligation of clarification had further increased the company's losses, so he filed a lawsuit. Since Sansheng III's IP authorization was obtained by Spring Mutual Entertainment from China United Investment and was not directly related to Tang Qi, Spring Mutual Entertainment also brought its own brother company into the defendant in order to allow the court to accept the lawsuit.

In fact, in the capital market, things like "suing yourself" that seem unbelievable to the outside world occur from time to time. For example, a game company and Internet tycoons jointly established a joint venture company. Due to poor game performance, the two sides fell out, and there was also a strange appearance that both the plaintiff and the defendant had shares in this game company. This can only be said that there is nothing unusual in the complex capital market.

Editor: Xiongwei