Tencent Holdings, the parent company of Riot Games, has won a case against Moonton Technology CEO Xu Zhenhua in China. The company has been awarded $2.9 million USD in damages. Moonton Technology is the developer of the popular mobile game Mobile Legends.
Last year, Riot Games sued Shanghai Moonton Technology Co., the developers of Mobile Legends, in the Central District Court of California. However, the case was dismissed due to forum non conviens, which means that another court or jurisdiction could hear the case more conveniently, in this case, China.
Tencent, the Chinese company, filed a separate lawsuit against Xu Zhenhua for non-disclosure and non-compete agreements. The official court document from the Shanghai No. 1 Intermediate People’s Court confirms that Xu Zhenhua was the subject of the lawsuit, although it doesn’t explicitly mention him as the CEO of Moonton. Another copyright-related lawsuit filed by Tencent in Shenzhen names Moonton as a defendant and Xu Zhenhua as the company’s representative.
The court ruled that Xu Zhenhua would have to pay Tencent 19.4 million RMB, instead of the initially proposed amount of 2.6 million RMB. It is unclear whether this payment was part of a pretrial settlement or if it was determined by the court.
Riot Games had presented evidence in the California lawsuit, comparing in-game assets of League of Legends and Mobile Legends. The similarities between the champions, abilities, maps, and other assets were striking.
Riot also included Moonton’s game Magic Rush: Heroes in the lawsuit, which featured playable characters similar to those in League of Legends.
In the lawsuit, Riot claimed that Moonton had made significant profits by copying League of Legends.
There are reports that Tencent’s mobile MOBA game King of Glory may join forces with Riot and Tencent to file an additional copyright infringement case against Moonton in the future.
Riot Games has not provided a comment on the matter at this time.
Update July 18 1:30am CT: Xu Zhenhua was named in the court document in which the fine was levied, not Moonton itself. We regret the error.