Our client Krafton Inc., owns the intellectual property rights of the game PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS (“PUBG”). As a phenomenal game, PUBG won a lot of important awards in the gaming industry and broke many records. Since launched, PUBG has been one of the most popular games in recent years in China. Our client found that frames, stories and elements of the movie named Biubiubiu (“Accused Movie”) are substantially similar with those of PUBG. The Accused Movie was jointly produced, published, promoted and disseminated by Defendants and published on Youku, a famous online video platform in China. Since launched in August, 2021, Accused Movie has been in the “Hot List of Movie” in Youku platform and generated revenue up to more than RMB 20 million. The frames, stories and elements of the movie seriously mislead the general public, and cause a confusion to the consumers as to the relationship between PUBG and the Accused Movie. Krafton engaged our team to file a lawsuit on the ground of copyright infringement and unfair competition before the Beijing IP Court. We requested the court to issue the permanent injunction of removing the movie from the platform and award the monetary damages. The Beijing IP Court issued the first instance decision in favor of us. The Beijing High Court upheld the decision in the second instance and the case has been closed. Court Decision The courts support our allegation that the overall pictures of the game belong to “audiovisual works.” The descriptions of the game rules belong to “written works.” The elements such as character images, clothes, weapons, vehicles and maps, etc. belong to “art works.” They found those elements were copied in the Accused Movie. The behaviors of the defendants constituted copyright infringement. The court also noted the misuse of PUBG-related elements in the movie could mislead consumers, which constitutes unfair competition. The courts determined the economic compensation to be RMB 5 million, the upper limit for statutory damages, under Chinese Copyright Law, and issued the permanent injunction to order the defendants to remove the movie from the platform. Implications This is the first case in which the online video game is asserted against an online movie in China. The courts award RMB 5 million, the upper limit for statutory damage under Chinese Copyright Law. This case pave the way for the companies in game industry to enforce their IP rights in China, especially in the field of film and television. We led this litigation at every stage. Our detailed legal analysis and evidence preparation were key to the win. Specifically, our team played PUBG for nearly two hundred hours so as to develop deep understand of the game and discover the detailed elements copied in the Accused Movie. We also made several video clips showing how the movie can be re-created with pure elements and scenes from the PUBG game. In gaming copyright case in China, it is important and necessary to invest in a large amount of time for detailed infringement comparison.