Sohu fined for copyright infringement
Updated at 2.04pm, Wednesday:A Beijing court has ordered the internationally known news portal Sohu.com pay 3,000 yuan (about HK$2,782) to Liu Jingsheng, a translator with China Radio International, for not answering the plaintiff's copyright infringement protest, Beijing Evening News reported on Tuesday.
The Intellectual Property Unit of the Beijing No 2 Intermediate People's Court also ordered Sohu.com to write Mr Liu an apology, the newspaper said. But the court did not hold Sohu.com liable for copyright infringement.
It is the first case of Internet link dispute in China, said Beijing Evening News.
According to the Evening News, Mr Liu used Sohu's search engine in October and turned up three Internet links to Web pages featuring his 1995 translations of Don Quixote. Mr Liu said those pages violated a copyright because they were posted without authorisation.
Sohu.com did not respond to Mr Liu's informal protest until the end of November, so Mr Liu took Sohu.com to court for copyright infringement, according to the Evening News.
The court said Sohu.com encouraged infringement because it didn't answer the initial complaint or delete the links from its Web pages, according to evening news. Nasdaq-listed Sohu.com is one of three leading Chinese-language Internet content providers in China.
