This is an interesting IP dispute, involving the copyright to the design of an iPhone application. Nifty. We’re talking here about a news app, so the underlying content is not at issue, but rather the packaging or design of the application that presents that content to the user.

Check out the comparison (if you’re reading a re-post without images, click here for the original):

Looks pretty close to me, and Netease has also complained about the look of the comments page and certain other elements. On a statement published on the Netease website, they said:

NetEase strongly condemns hooliganism of Tencent and demands Tencent withdraw it from the App Store.

No one appreciates hooliganism, aside from some football fans in the British Isles.

You might be thinking this one is a slam dunk based on the above image. Not so fast. There are differences here with icons, heading content, and even color. And remember that this is an iPhone app — there simply aren’t that many options for a news app, which is why a lot of these end up looking similar.

Is this copyright infringement and would Netease win if they took this to court? I don’t think it’s as easy as it looks at first glance.

What do you think?

© Stan for China Hearsay, 2012. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: copyright infringement, NetEase, Tencent