Dangdang.com, the world's largest Chinese online shopping mall, was taken to court by Han Zhongliang, director of Spring Wind Literature Press, who claimed that dangdang.com has been engaged in the selling of illegally printed or pirated Spring Wind Literature Press books. Han Zhongliang claimed RMB 50,000 (6,458 USD) in compensation. Yesterday dangdang.com admitted their error in a Beijing Dongchen Court.

Mr. Zhang, the office administrator of Spring Wind Literature Press, stated that last April, Spring Wind Literature Press suddenly received a letter from an author surnamed Jiang, claiming that he saw a book entitled "Moving, Confiding"  which incorporated Jiang's essay for sale on the Internet.  Jiang, however, had never received a sample book and remuneration. The publishing house responded that they didn't know of the book existence and it had not been published by the company.

By conducting an Internet search, the publishing house found 12 books available on dangdang.com which bore the trademark of Spring Wind Literature Press. Upon further inspection of the twelve books, however, it was discovered that only two books were actually published by the publishing house and even these were pirated copies of the original prints. The other ten books were entirely illegal publications that were being printed under the name, Spring Wind Literature Press. Upon discovering this information, Han Zhongliang requested dangdang.com to apologize for their actions and pay RMB 50,000 in damages.

The defendant in the case was Beijing Kewen Book Information Technology Co., Ltd, which owns dangdang.com. The company admitted that it was responsible for selling bootlegged copies of Spring Wing Literature Press but pointed out that they had received these books from a different distributing company. As the seller, however, dangdang.com was responsible for the material itself and the examination of the legality of the purchasing channels of the material. In regards to this oversight on the part of dangdang.com, the company has expressed it apologies.

At the trials conclusion, both parties expressed that they were willing to reconcile. A representative of dangdang.com stated that the Internet company sells hundreds of thousands of books every day. Therefore, it was impossible to examine every book, but they will consult with their book suppliers to address the problem.

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