This is a 2025 typical civil copyright judgment from a Zhejiang intellectual‑property court, arising from the fast‑growing Chinese micro‑short‑drama industry. To evade copyright accountability, the actual operator deliberately split operational roles: one shell company completed website ICP filing and public platform display, while another shell entity handled payment collection, and the undisclosed real‑control enterprise took charge of content piracy, server deployment and profit allocation The actual controlling entity never appeared on website filing records, merchant qualification pages, customer payment receipts or public contact information, creating substantial obstacles for copyright owners to identify real infringers in preliminary investigation. In this case, the hidden actual controller is anonymized as Nova Media Group; the filing shell entity is named Alpha Web Co., Ltd., and the payment‑receiving shell is named Beta E‑commerce Co., Ltd. The plaintiff is a professional short‑drama production company holding complete copyright for multiple hit micro‑drama series.
The plaintiff invested massive capital, screenwriting manpower and shooting resources to produce a batch of original paid short‑drama works and completed copyright registration for each episode. In mid‑2024, the plaintiff’s intellectual‑property monitoring team discovered an unlicensed paid short‑drama website, which reproduced and distributed more than 40 episodes of the plaintiff’s original short‑drama works without authorization. The pirated site adopted a membership recharge payment model, generating direct revenue from unauthorized playback. Website ICP filing information publicly displayed Alpha Web Co., Ltd. as the sole operating subject. The plaintiff conducted notarized web preservation and recorded the whole playback and recharge process of the infringing website.
The plaintiff issued formal cease‑and‑desist legal letters to Alpha Web. Alpha Web responded that it only provided domain‑name filing technical agency services and did not participate in content operation, video uploading or revenue collection. This shell company maintained extremely low registered capital, no content‑production personnel, no self‑owned server resources, and its registered address belonged to a shared virtual office park. Further evidence showed that all user recharge funds on the infringing website flowed into the corporate bank account of Beta E‑commerce Co., Ltd. Beta E‑commerce also denied content‑operation liability and claimed it only provided third‑party payment technical docking services. Both shell companies argued they were merely technical service providers and should not bear primary copyright infringement liability.
Facing the deliberate subject‑splitting setup, the plaintiff filed litigation against both Alpha Web and Beta E‑commerce, and applied to the court for evidence production order and electronic evidence preservation, requesting access to website backend log data, capital settlement records, internal staff communication records, server hosting contracts and profit‑sharing documents of the two shell defendants.
After the court granted the evidence‑obtaining application, key factual evidence gradually surfaced. Website backend operation logs showed that all video‑uploading, content‑shelf adjustment and membership‑price modification operations were remotely operated by IP addresses associated with Nova Media Group. Bank settlement records demonstrated that after receiving user recharge funds, Beta E‑commerce transferred most profits to Nova Media Group’s corporate account according to pre‑agreed profit‑sharing ratios. Internal WeChat work‑group records further confirmed that Nova Media Group formulated all core operational decisions, including pirated‑content selection, membership pricing strategy and risk‑avoidance rules. Alpha Web and Beta E‑commerce had no independent decision‑making power over website content and profit distribution; they were deliberately set‑up tool companies undertaking only separated filing and fund‑receiving links for Nova Media Group. Core management personnel were cross‑associated among the three entities.
The core legal dispute of this case was whether the hidden actual controller Nova Media Group should bear joint and several copyright infringement liability, even though its name never appeared on any public webpage or filing materials. The defendant Nova Media Group contended that it had no direct contractual relationship with website end‑users and did not hold website filing qualification, so it should not be recognized as an information‑network‑communication infringer.
The intellectual‑property court comprehensively reviewed backend operation logs, capital flow paths, internal communication records, personnel correlation and the subjective purpose of setting up multiple shell entities. The court held that where multiple companies are controlled and divided into different procedural links to implement copyright infringement and evade legal sanctions, the people’s court may pierce corporate personality under China’s Civil Code and Company Law and order the hidden actual controller to bear joint civil liability. Nova Media Group actually implemented the core infringing acts of reproducing and disseminating short‑drama works through controlled shell‑company tools. Alpha Web and Beta E‑commerce provided indispensable divided links for the whole infringement chain. All three constituted joint infringement of the right of information‑network transmission. The court ordered all defendants to immediately stop disseminating the pirated short‑drama episodes, shut down the infringing website, and jointly compensate the plaintiff for economic losses plus reasonable rights‑protection expenses including notarization fees, electronic‑forensic appraisal fees and attorney fees.
This case delivers important practical takeaways for copyright owners facing online piracy. First, ICP‑filing subject information cannot be directly equated with the actual infringing operator. Bad‑faith infringers frequently split filing, payment and content‑operation links among different shell entities to isolate risks. Second, in network copyright litigation, right holders should actively apply for court‑ordered production of backend electronic evidence and capital settlement documents; backend logs and fund‑flow records constitute decisive evidence to trace hidden actual controllers. Third, do not only sue the publicly displayed filing entity; when clues indicate hidden controlling parties exist, add suspected actual controllers as co‑defendants at an early litigation stage. Reliance only on superficial public information will easily lead to nominal winning judgments with poor enforcement effects. Right holders should collect multi‑dimensional circumstantial evidence such as server‑hosting information, fund destination and internal business chat records to build complete evidence chains for piercing shell‑company structures.
1. National Copyright Administration of China official website: https://www.ncac.gov.cn
2. China IPR Judgement Document Database: https://ipr.court.gov.cn
3. China Copyright Protection Center: https://www.ccopyright.com.cn
4. ICLG Copyright Laws and Regulations China 2026: https://iclg.com/practice‑areas/copyright‑laws‑and‑regulations/china
