The First Intermediate People's Court tried 17 foreign-related IPR infringement cases yesterday morning. Among 17 cases, those involved in right infringement included overseas listed enterprises like SOHU and vendors selling pirated disks. All of the Chinese enterprises and individuals involved in the lawsuits had lost them. Five film companies in USA filed a lawsuit against SOHU. The court decided that SOHU had to pay over RMB1 million in compensation.

According to five US film producers inclusive of 21st Century Fox, Warner Bros, New Line, Columbia Pictures and Global, SOHU has started to provide film download service per month via its broadband channel since the second half of 2004. Downloaded films included ten blockbusters such as the Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter Ⅲ and Ocean's Eleven made by these five companies. They took SOHU to court and lodged a claim for compensation of a total of RMB5 million. At the same time they requested SOHU to issue an apology in the newspaper. After the trial, the court believed that SOHU’s providing download service belonged to right infringement and ordered SOHU to pay five companies a total of over RMB1 million. It also asked SOHU to publish a apology statement on its website. The representative of SOHU after the trial said that they had purchased the online copyright of the related movies from the other company. However, they never expected that this company didn’t have online copyright of the above movies at all. After SOHU was brought a lawsuit against, it had shut down the broadband channel involved in copyright infringement. SOHU said that it would take a lesson from it and consciously boycotted piracy and right infringement behaviour.

The other 16 IPR cases included many international well-known brands such as Sony, Disney, Pfizer Pharmaceuticals Limited and Kenwood. Their products and service involved a lot of fields such as film, electronic entertainment, pharmaceutical, telecommunications equipments, industrial technologies, clothing, shoes and hats. As regards Walkie talkie produced by two enterprises in Fujian, there is the difference of only one letter between their trade marks and that of Kenwood, a Japanese Walkie talkie’s brand name. Meanwhile their appearance design and instructions completely copied Kenwood products. The First Intermediate People's Court decided that two companies in Fujian paid compensation of RMB4 million to Kenwood. Electronic race car game disc of Sony and disc of the film named King Arthur made by Disney were produced and sold by the illegal domestic companies who had piracy behaviour. The piracy enterprises and vendors selling pirated disks were heavily fined yesterday.

Cu Chi, vice president of The First Intermediate People's Court told the reporter that First Intermediate People's Court had handled over 670 IPR foreign-related cases since 2002, among which about 60% of foreign parties won the lawsuits. These data strongly indicated that China strictly abided by WTO’s related agreements and rules on international IPR and equally protected the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese and foreign parties, which strongly refuted the unreasonable blame on China’s inefficient IPR protection.