The Fair Trade Commission said yesterday that one of Taiwan's major Internet portals, Yam.com (
While the verdict resulted in a NT$300,000 fine for Yahoo-Kimo, one Yam official said the company will keep fighting for further compensation.
"We are planning to take other legal action with regards to the copyright law in an effort to protect our shareholders' interests," said Chen Wei-tseng (
Since Yahoo-Kimo violated regulations with regards to market fairness, Yam will seek to recoup losses and ask for direct compensation from Yahoo-Kimo, the attorney said "We will take legal action as soon as possible."
The clash between local Web giants first occurred in April, with Yam accusing Yahoo-Kimo of copying articles in its "What's new today" online section. According to the charges, the majority of articles published by Yam between March 29 and April 17 were almost identical in content, wording and phrasing to those used by Yahoo-Kimo.
According to Fair Trade Commission Vice Chairman Cheng Yu (
After a Yam official blew the whistle, Yahoo-Kimo admitted their misdeed and immediately deleted all of the content overlap, Cheng said.
The fine for violating the fair trade law can be as high as NT$25 million.
Yahoo-Kimo expressed regret over the verdict.
"We feel sincerely sorry about the decision ? our company already apologized for the mistake on April 20," said Lynn Kuo (
Chen said that it was Yahoo-Kimo's failure to issue a formal apology that sparked the lawsuit. "We asked Yahoo-Kimo to post apologies in newspapers and on their Web site, but they did not," Chen said. "Since the commission has supported our case, we have decided to seek further compensation in the courts. We may be entitled to more than NT$300,000."
According to the Fair Trade Commission, compensation may be triple the amount of a company's estimated losses as a result of copyright violations, although "it may be difficult to measure damages as a result of some intellectual property violations," Chen said.
Yahoo reached an agreement in August last year to purchase Kimo, the top Chinese-language portal in Taiwan, for some US$146 million in stock.
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