Beijing Intermediate Court Published Its First Preservation Injunction Against Baidu

360诉百度

(By You Yunting) The Chinese internet industry is a fiercely competitive one in which many large internet companies have used lawsuits to gain a competitive advantage. Lawyers are engaged by internet companies to fight against their competitors using any new laws and regulations that might offer opportunity. In the most recent unfair competition litigation Qihoo 360 v. Baidu, Qihoo 360 applied for a litigation injunction to prevent Baidu engaging in infringement. On May 23, 2014, the Beijing No.1 Intermediate People’s Court issued its first litigation injunction since the new Civil Procedure Law came into effect.

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Is It Legitimate for Toutiao.com to Transcode News Websites for Mobile Users?

toutiao

(By You Yunting) According to news, Toutiao, a personalized news app, announced that Toutiao has secured 100 million dollar of Series C financing at a valuation of 500 million dollar. Afterwards, the Beijing News, a traditional paper news, soon posted a comment that Toutiao’s contents are suspected of copyright infringement. However, Toutiao instantly replied in denying infringement. In today’s post, we would like to analyze the infringement issues of Toutiao from the legal prospective.

First is to introduce the push approach of Toutiao. When visiting its official website on a computer, it is found to be relatively regulated, similar with the news channel of Baidu and Google, that every recommended news had an abstract linking to the original website which published the news.

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Baidu Library Makes Huge Compensation on Copyright Infringement for Publishing Press

baiduwenku

(By You Yunting) Recently, in the proceeding litigation alleging copyright infringement, Beijing China Youth Book Inc. vs Baidu Library, the Beijing No.1 Intermediate People’s Court issued a judgment requiring that Baidu compensate Beijing China Youth Book Inc. 350,000 Yuan. When compared with the 20,000 Yuan compensation required for a pirated movie, the ordered compensation is much larger than expected. This simultaneously reflects the strengthening of legal sanctions against internet copyright infringement and suggests that the standard on which copyright infringement compensation is judged lacks rationality in China.

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Internet Society of China Published the Convention of Self-Discipline for Internet Terminal Security Service

(By You Yunting) On December 4, 2013, Internet Society of China (the “ISC”) published the Convention of Self-Discipline for Internet Terminal Security Service (the “Convention”) in Beijing. Those eight Internet terminal security service providers, such as Tencent (0700.HK), Baidu (NASD: BIDU), QIHOO (NYSE:QIHU), Kingsoft Corporation Limited (03888.HK), RISING, Jiangmin Technology, TOPSEC and NetIQ Mobile Inc, signed on the Convention. Afterwards, there are about 23 companies, i.e. SOHU (NASDAQ:SOHU), Sogou, Xunlei and Xiaomi Technology signing related documents in favor of the Convention. The Convention, comprising of 6 chapters and 27 articles, aims to protect legal interests of users, maintain a fair and harmonious market competitive environment and promote the healthy development of internet industry.

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China’s Latest Laws and Regulations in April 2013

I. The Supreme People’s Court and Local People’s Courts Successively Released White Books on Judicial Protection of Intellectual Property in 2012 and Model Cases.

On April 22, before World Intellectual Property Day, the Supreme People’s Court released the White Book on Judicial Protection of Intellectual Property By Chinese Courts in 2012 (the ”White Book”) and Model Cases embodying new Issues related to intellectual property protection.

Afterwards, the local people’s courts successively released local white books on local intellectual property protection and local model cases. On April 25, the Shanghai High People’s Court held a press conference and released the White Book of the Shanghai People’s Court on Intellectual Property Adjudication in 2012 and Ten Key Cases.

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Is It Lawful for News Websites to Demand Payment of Fees for Google and Baidu Searches

(By You Yunting) According to a report in the New York Times, as also reported by some European websites, Google is recompiling its searched news results as a news page. It may be said that this method could infringe the copyright of the original publishing websites and, as a result, Google should pay fees for the websites. This idea has received support from both the French and German Governments, yet Google believes that its behavior fully conforms to the law, and thus should not have to pay any fees. In China, the main search engines Google and Baidu provide this kind of news search service, and today’s post will discuss whether it is lawful for news websites to claim fees from the search engines.

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Why China Is Not Among Top 20 Countries of Pirated Music Download?

By You Yunting

Musicmetric, a website in USA, published the top 20 countries of pirated music download, yet to most ones’ astonishment, China is not found on the tally, who is commonly accused of granting least protection on IPR. Then what contributes to the surprising result? In today’s post, you could find our answer to it.

I. Most online music services are using the copyrighted ones

Unlike chargeable music download in iTunes or through P2P in USA, most users in China tend to get their free music by search engine, or download or listen to them by music software. The most popular music service now in China is from Baidu (NASDAQ: BIDU) and Tencent (SEHK: 700), whose music library is mostly licensed by the main recorders around the world.

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Is It Illegal for 360buy Blocking Etao’s Price Comparisonand Plugin?

Today we are going to discuss legal problems concerning the 360buy blocking Etao.com, Alibaba’s price comparison website,’ and its plug-ins. And it shall be first pointed out, the author has no relation with either party of the event. The introduction to the event background:

In November of 2011, 360buy took technical measures to block the price search engine of Etao, who afterwards replied it would no longer index the price data of 360buy by Weibo. Yet in the price war between 360buy and Suning, Etao again published the live price comparison between 360buy and other online shopping stores. And in recent, 360buy further blocked the browser plug-in of Etao on 360buy.com, and the plug-in is designed to show the prices on different websites of the same product. Etao stated 360buy is paralyzing its software.

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Suggestions from Chinese Writer on the Modification on Copyright Law

The modification on China Copyright Law is under preparation, and as news reports, for the promote of internet prosperity and infringement combat, Ms. Zhang Kangkang, the vice president of Chinese Writers Association and China Literary Copyright Protection Association suggested on the law modification recently:

I. To legally determine the fault ascertainment standard of Safe Harbor Rule

Ms. Zhang suggested to drafted the standard of “known or shall be known” as the legal standard of the ISP fault ascertainment, meanwhile, the obligation of ISP shall also be listed in the modified law while no too high obligation shall be set.

Bridge IP Law Commentary’s opinion: There’s no legal standard on the ascertainment of ISP fault in Copyright Law, with the standard is referred to partly in the Article 36 of Infringement liability law, “Where no measures have been taken by IPS on knowing the infringement or violation by users against others, the ISP shall take the joint liability with the infringer.”

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The Copyright Dilemma of the Online Literature Industry in China

   

Highlights: The online literature in China is jeopardized by piracy. And for the safe harbor rules and massive uploading by netizens, such long-standing could not be effectively combated. Bridge IP Commentary will make analysis on such phenomenon.

In 2010, Shanda Literature (“Shanda”) sued Baidu over pirated literature works on mobiles net and its refusal to delete such works upon the complaint from Shanda. To Shanda’s claim, Baidu holds that it has removed the infringed part while others are examined of no infringement, and it shall take no liability hereby. Baidu was sentenced to take the liability in first instance, and then appealed but withdrew the suit at the end. Thus Baidu shall compensate Shanda RMB 500,000 yuan by the effective decision of the hearing. In this essay, Bridge will analyze the case and legal issues concerning the development of the original literature on the internet in China.

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