Fangda Partners recently secured a favorable decision on behalf of our client the online education company Beijing Yuanli Technology Co. LTD (“Beijing Yuanli”) against the defendants former employee Mr. Wang Wei and his new employer NetEase Youdao for unauthorized acquisition and use of the student IDs owned by Beijing Yuanli.

This is the first ever trade secret dispute involving misappropriation of student IDs, which are unique identifiers automatically generated when each student joins an online class. The key issues in dispute are whether the student IDs constitute trade secrets and whether Mr. Wang’s obtaining the student IDs during his employment as an online teacher constitutes misappropriation of the trade secrets. The Beijing IP Court ruled in favor of Beijing Yuanli on both issues. In this case, the Beijing IP Court rejected rigid interpretation of the statutory language proposed by the defendants, and instead focused on the principle of fairness and good faith in reaching its decision.

The case has been selected by the Beijing Intellectual Property Court as one of the Top 10 trade secret cases of the year.

The Fangda team consists of partner Qi Fang, other members include associates Olivia Fan and Li Jie.