China has issued a new landmark ruling in the field of key digital technologies. It concerns data extraction and data trading by iDataAPI and demonstrates China’s strengthened stance on protecting data rights and promoting data flow.

The operator of Sina Weibo (plaintiff) sued a company and its subsidiary in Shenzhen, the operator of the iDataAPI website (defendant). Users could retrieve large amounts of Weibo data through the iDataAPI’s API, including back-end data and the operator’s big data product “Micro Index.” The API had over two billion calls. The plaintiff, the operator of Sina Weibo, accused the operator of the iDataAPI website of illegally retrieving, storing, and selling data from the Weibo servers through malicious technical means and demanded 20 million RMB in damages and 500,000 RMB for reasonable expenses – a total of approximately 2.7 million EUR.

The Guangdong Provincial High People’s Court ruled that the plaintiff has the right to control, use, and derive economic benefits from the Weibo data. The defendant had unlawfully retrieved and sold data through deceptive technical means, disrupting competition in the data market and significantly harming the rights of the plaintiff and consumers. The court ordered the defendant to pay 20 million RMB (approximately 2.6 million EUR) in damages and to publish a statement to eliminate the negative impacts.

This case is the first in China to involve the illegal use of server API interfaces and the resale of data. It emphasizes the protection of data resource rights and the balance between protection and data flow. At the same time, the ruling represents one of the highest damage awards in a data competition dispute in China.

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