TikTok, the Chinese video-sharing social networking service owned by ByteDance recently made judicial history in copyright infringement.
ByteDance was able to win a copyright infringement case against a competing platform called Huopai because of China’s policy allowing the use of blockchain technology to verify evidence in court.
ByteDance holds a blockchain ledger that keeps track of all the data that goes through their service. This blockchain ledger allowed ByteDance to prove that Huopai’s owner, Baidu, had stolen a video from their TikTok platform and allowed downloads of the digital item. This evidence helped to decide the case for ByteDance, and validated blockchain technology as a judicial tool to defeat copyright infringment.
Blockchain technology is making a mark on the intellectual property world and will possibly become a large component of verifying digital evidence in the future.
An article of the case entitled, “How TikTok Used Blockchain to Defeat Copyright Infringement” on IPWatchDog can be found at https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2020/03/17/tiktok-used-blockchain-defeat-copyright-infringement/id=119878/