A Beijing court on Thursday ruled in favor of Taiwanese romance novelist Chiung Yao (瓊瑤) in an intellectual property infringement case, awarding her damages of 5 million yuan (US$802,500).
The novelist had filed legal action against five people involved in the production of The Palace: The Lost Daughter (宮鎖連城), a period drama TV series about court intrigue during the Qing Dynasty.
In the lawsuit, Chiung Yao said the TV series had plagiarized her 1993 novel Plum Blossom Scar (梅花烙).
The defendants included screenwriter Yu Zheng (于正), Hunan etv Media Culture Co and Wanda Cinemas.
In its verdict, the court ruled that Yu must issue an apology on major Chinese news Web sites, including Sina.com and Ifeng.com, and pay compensation of 5 million yuan to Chiung Yao.
“My eyes are welling with tears. I just want to proclaim that a major step has been taken toward upholding justice and intellectual property rights,” Chiung Yao said on the Weibo fan page of Flowers in Fog (花非花霧非霧), another TV series based on her writing.
Several renowned Chinese screenwriters, including Wang Hailin (汪海林) and Zhao Dongling (趙冬苓), welcomed the ruling by the Third Intermediate People’s Court of Beijing.
Zhao said on his Weibo page that the decision represents a great leap forward in China’s court rulings on matters of intellectual property rights.
Meanwhile, citing a lack of compelling evidence, Yu’s studio issued a statement saying that it intends to appeal the court’s decision.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching