The Chinese owner of video-sharing app TikTok will appeal a local court decision that it violated copyright by allowing the livestreaming of a popular Tencent mobile game.

Beijing-based company ByteDance said on Monday that it would challenge the ruling of the Guangzhou Intellectual Property Court and the fine of 8 million yuan (US$1.2 million).

In April, the court ruled that ByteDance’s short-video platform Douyin Huoshan Version infringed the intellectual property rights of rival Chinese tech giant Tencent, for letting users livestream the latter’s video game Honor of Kings without permission.

The livestreamed videos showed copyrighted content owned by Tencent, and that usage could not be understood as “fair use,” the court said. Aside from the fine, the court ordered ByteDance to stop its users from further livestreams of Honor of Kings.

In a Monday statement, ByteDance argued that it had not broken the law as game players should own the copyright to the contents of a livestream. The images shown on screen in a multiplayer online game were created entirely as a result of players’ actions, the company said.

Some Chinese internet users sided with Tencent, arguing that video game publishers had a right to decide where their games would be livestreamed. Others felt that Tencent was abusing its dominant market position and criticized it for past incidents of copyright infringement.

Observers noted that the court ruling might have wide-reaching implications, as most Chinese streamers did not receive authorization from game publishers to livestream their games.

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