Dianping.com Awarded Compensation from Aibang.com in Copyright Case

Two of China’s many group buying start-ups have ended a long-running legal battle, with Aibang.com ordered to pay the larger Dianping.com compensation for systematically stealing venue listings and user reviews.

The Beijing Court of Appeals today upheld an earlier verdict, and thus drew a final line across this dispute. The judge ordered Aibang to compensate Dianping to the tune of RMB 500,000 (about US$77,000), citing plagiarism and unfair competition.

With there being literally thousands of group buying sites in China – with a few dozen prospering reasonably well, and a handful of those having gained funding – the quality of listed venues and the quantity of user reviews can be crucial in making a site look more successful in the eyes of users. Aibang, in light of the judge’s verdict, as well as a growing clampdown on intellectual property violations, is lucky not to be having to pay out a 1 million+ RMB figure.

Both Aibang and Dianping have similar roots: starting out as city listings and review websites many years ago, before venturing into the explosive new group buying arena last year.

We’ve looked at China’s top 10 group buy sites before, and found that Lashou.com is the biggest indie site, but it trails home in second place in terms of number of visitors to giant Tencent’s own deal-of-the-day portal.

Penn Olson sat down and chatted with Dianping’s VP of Product and Operations, Michael Jiang, at this year’s Global Mobile Internet Conference – watch the video for his reflections on being “China’s Yelp” with 30 million users and a recent valuation at US$1 billion.

[Source: Techweb]