SHANGHAI (Reuters) -
A Chinese court has fined Apple Inc 1 million yuan ($160,400) for
hosting third-party applications on its App Store that were selling
pirated electronic books, the official Xinhua news agency reported on
Friday.
Apple is to pay
compensation to eight Chinese writers and two companies for violating
their copyrights, the Beijing No.2 Intermediate People's Court ruled on
Thursday, Xinhua said.
Earlier in the year, a
group of Chinese authors filed the suit against Apple, saying an
unidentified number of apps on its App Store sold unlicensed copies of
their books. The group of eight authors was seeking 10 million yuan in
damages.
"We are disappointed at
the judgment. Some of our best-selling authors only got 7,000 yuan. The
judgment is a signal of encouraging piracy," Bei Zhicheng, a spokesman
for the group, told Reuters.
Apple said in a statement that it takes copyright infringement complaints "very seriously".
"We're always updating our
service to better assist content owners in protecting their rights,"
Apple spokeswoman Carolyn Wu said.
China has the world's
largest Internet and mobile market by number of users, but piracy costs
software companies billions of dollars each year.
Apple, whose products
enjoy great popularity in China, has faced a string of legal headaches
this year. In July, Apple paid 60 million yuan to a Chinese firm,
Proview Technology, to settle a long-running lawsuit over the iPad
trademark in China.
($1 = 6.2360 Chinese yuan)
(Reporting by Shanghai Newsroom and Melanie Lee; Editing by Kazunori Takada and Matt Driskill)
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