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Linda Yeung

Educational Testing Service wins Beijing court case against school organisation providing pirate copies of its material

The world's largest provider of exam papers, Educational Testing Service (ETS), will continue to supply old papers to mainland students despite copyright problems.

ETS recently won a court battle against  Beijing-based English language training centre New Oriental School which was ordered to pay nine million yuan (HK$8.43 million) to ETS for selling pirated copies of its copyright test papers.

Susan Chyn, ETS director of business development (Asia-Pacific), said her company was grateful for the court decision under which the New Oriental School also had to pay  470,000 yuan to the Graduate Management Admission Council, developer of the GMAT test required for entry into MBA programmes.

The lawsuit began in 2001 after the school, which has centres across the country, was found to have distributed the pirated copies for sale and on its website.

The popular Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) and Graduate Record Examination (GRE) tests are taken by 100,000 and 40,000 mainland students annually.

Ms Chyn said that despite the huge problem of copyright infringement in China, the company knew that Asian students liked to have access to old test questions and ETS would continue to make test samples available to them.

'There are cultural differences between Asian and European students in the way they prepare for tests. Asian students work very hard, sometimes spending one or two years preparing for tests,' she said. 'Everyone knows that China is a large country and it is always possible that there are copies of old tests that may have been gained illegally. We will be watching out to protect our copyright.'

She added that the ruling by Beijing No 1 Intermediate People's Court late last month gave the company more confidence issuing test materials in China through its business partners.

She was also hopeful that China's entry into the World Trade Organisation would lead to better copyright protection.

But ETS will increasingly use questions in TOEFL and GRE in China and other parts of Asia only once for each examination, contrary to its practice in Europe, where test questions are often re-used, Ms Chyn said. ETS was also planning to transfer the paper-based TOEFL tests to the Web from around 2005. Ms Chyn said the new generation TOEFL would feature multi-media functions and test students' speaking ability.



Exams firm maintains paper flow despite suit