Dissident writer loses 'political' copyright case

Dissident writer Wang Tiancheng yesterday lost his appeal to the Beijing Higher People's Court over allegations of plagiarism levelled against Wuhan legal professor Zhou Yezhong .

The Beijing Higher People's Court announced that it supported the Beijing No2 Intermediate People's Court's decision in July to reject Wang's demand for an apology and 60,000 yuan from Professor Zhou, his student and co-writer, Dai Jitao, and the People's Publishing House over the publication of a book on constitutional law last year.

Mr Wang claimed that Professor Zhou, a star legal academic who has lectured senior officials, deliberately copied more than 5,000 words in the book from Wang's published papers without attribution.

Wang is a former Peking University Law School lecturer who spent five years in jail from 1992 for his dissident activities.

Represented by leading Beijing lawyers Zhang Sizhi and Pu Zhiqiang , Wang appealed to the higher court against the ruling in July and an open hearing was held in October.

The case has drawn much attention in the legal community and on the internet thanks to the contrasting reputations of its protagonists. It is also seen as a benchmark case, few of its kind having made it so far in the legal system, despite several charges of plagiarism and academic misconduct levelled this year at a number of prominent professors.

The higher court agreed that seven passages amounting to 1,398 words contained in Professor Zhou's book were basically the same as the content of Wang's papers and should be protected by copyright law.