Beijing Internet Court has concluded more than 32,000 Internet service contract disputes in 8 years

China News Service, Beijing, November 10 (Reporter Chen Hang) Since its establishment in 2018, the Beijing Internet Court has accepted a total of 35,869 cases of various network service contract disputes and concluded 32,947 cases. Relevant cases show the characteristics of platform governance extending to new business formats and new scenarios, and new types of penalties causing controversy.

This reporter learned this on the 10th from the Beijing Internet Court’s press conference on the trial of disputes involving platform governance network service contracts.

Zhao Changxin, deputy director of the Beijing Internet Court, said at the press conference that various types of network service contract disputes are increasing rapidly year by year. The overall number of related cases is small before 2023. From January to October in 2024, 2025 and 2026, the number of cases accepted reached 311, 2970 and 6909 respectively.

Zhao Changxin said that relevant cases mainly cover the three major application scenarios of online shopping, online live broadcasting, and life services, accounting for 60.6%, 36.1%, and 3.3% respectively. Among them, disputes involving online shopping and online live broadcast platform governance have increased significantly, indicating that in the rapid development of online transactions and live broadcast formats, rule friction and governance risks have become increasingly prominent, and it is urgent to clarify the boundaries of platform power and the bottom line of responsibility through judicial adjudication.

Zhao Changxin said that with the in-depth development of the platform economy, platform governance disputes continue to enter the judicial process. The penalty scenarios for platform governance have expanded from traditional intellectual property complaints and product quality complaints to scenarios such as improper acquisition and use of data by merchants, infringement of consumers' personal information, and violations of AI-generated content labeling obligations.

Zhao Changxin said that in the network service contract dispute between Zhang and an e-commerce company, the platform punished the operators within the merchant platform by deducting liquidated damages on the grounds of "improper acquisition of information", and the merchant filed a lawsuit demanding the return of liquidated damages. After trial, the court held that the plaintiff leaked the information of 347 consumers to a certain order-taking software during the operation of the store to circumvent the platform's virtual account rules, which constituted the leakage of other people's information and violated the platform rules. The court ultimately ruled to reject the plaintiff's lawsuit.