This is the commercial defamation lawsuit in which Riot accused Moonton, due to how similar Mobile Legends is to League of Legends
When Riot accuses of infringement and defamation over its longtime mobile rival Moonton, they usually win the lawsuit. In a surprising turn of events, the Chinese court ruled in favour of the former!
According to reports, Tencent had hired lawyers and a legal team in order for them to contact Moonton’s Indonesian TV Partner RevivalTV just right before the MPL E-sports tournament.
This new filing is related over a previous plagiarism case in which Riot had won, as the company’s lawyers claimed. However, no official court ruling had made such a call. To recall, when Mobile Legends first debuted, many longtime fans of League of Legends accused the game as nothing more than a blatant copy. This accusation among players eventually reached Tencent, the parent company of Riot, and they started suing Moonton in 2016.
Moonton and ByteDance said that this defamation case caused unnecessary disruption, losses, and had put the two companies in a bad light. The Supreme Court in China agreed to this response and that Riot and Tencent are “out of the line” when this case was filed.
This accusation ruled in favour of Moonton and has demanded Riot to pay CNY 220,000 (~Php 1.8M) in damages. Both publishers are yet to comment regarding this ruling.