A Chinese court has fined
Apple Inc. 1 million Yuan for hosting third-party applications on its App Store
that were selling pirated electronic books, the official Xinhua news agency
reported on Friday.
Apple is to pay compensation of $165,000 (U.S.) to
eight Chinese writers and two companies for violating their copyrights, the
Beijing No.2 Intermediate People’s Court ruled on Thursday, Xinhua said.
Earlier in the year, a group of Chinese authors
filed the suit against Apple, saying an unidentified number of apps on its App
Store sold unlicensed copies of their books. The group of eight authors was
seeking 10 million Yuan in damages.
“We are disappointed at the judgment. Some of our
best-selling authors only got 7,000 Yuan. The judgment is a signal of
encouraging piracy,” Bei Zhicheng, a spokesman for the group, told Reuters.
Apple said in a statement that it takes copyright
infringement complaints “very seriously”.
“We’re always updating our service to better assist
content owners in protecting their rights,” Apple spokeswoman Carolyn Wu said.
China has the world’s largest Internet and mobile
market by number of users, but piracy costs software companies billions of
dollars each year.
Apple, whose products enjoy great popularity in
China, has faced a string of legal headaches this year. In July, Apple paid 60
million Yuan to a Chinese firm, Proview Technology, to settle a long-running
lawsuit over the iPad trademark in China.
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