A Chinese court began hearing a piracy lawsuit yesterday that alleges 20th Century Fox Film Corp violated a Chinese writer's copyright, state press reported yesterday.
The Hollywood movie studio was accused of stealing the plot and creative ideas in two plays written by Li Jianmin (李建敏) for use in its blockbuster film The Day After Tomorrow, Xinhua news agency said.
Li, who lodged the lawsuit at the the Intermediate court in Dongying, Shandong Province, in March last year, claimed that the 2004 film about lethal natural disasters has 308 scenes that he wrote.
The case was one of several that came to light in state press this week only days after the US formally lodged a complaint against copyright piracy in China with the WTO.
Washington announced on Monday it would file the piracy case with the WTO. A trade official in Geneva confirmed on Tuesday that Washington's case had been filed.
China's Commerce Ninistry hit back on Tuesday and yesterday at the US decision warning the move was ill-informed and would damage trade relations.
It said on Tuesday that Beijing plans a full overhaul of policies favoring its export sector in an effort to rein in its huge trade surplus and reduce tensions with major trading partners, the China Business News said yesterday.
The government will gradually shift away from its former strategy of actively encouraging exports, the newspaper said, citing the head of the ministry's foreign trade department.
The government has already started to overhaul various export subsidies, terminating those banned by the WTO and reassessing others that could attract legal challenges, the report said.
Meanwhile, 11 recording companies under the control of the world's top four record firms -- EMI, Sony, Warner and Universal -- will sue Yahoo China for music copyright infringement, the Beijing Daily Messenger said yesterday. The companies have accused Yahoo China of offering downloads of 223 Chinese and English language songs that would have been worth 5.5 million yuan (US$710 million) the paper said.
In a separate case involving Sohu.com (
Google apologized to Sohu.com for using its technology in the product it released last week, but said it had corrected the problem and would not withdraw the software.
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