Chinese legal experts challenge U.S. court's ruling over Green Dam suit

BEIJING, Dec. 8 (Xinhua) -- Chinese legal experts said Wednesday that a lawsuit filed against Chinese Internet-filtering software, Green Dam, should be heard in China instead of the U.S., challenging a U.S. court's rejection of a request to dismiss the lawsuit.

The California Central District Court denied the motion by four PC makers, Sony, Acer, BenQ and Asustek, to dismiss the $2.2 billion U.S. dollar lawsuit brought in January by the California-based Cybersitter, allowing it to proceed in the U.S., said a court document dated Nov. 18. Cybersitter, a maker of parental control software, alleged that two Chinese firms that developed the Green Dam Youth Escort program copied its code and has sued the developers and the PC makers distributing the software, claiming copyright infringement.

Chinese PC makers Lenovo and Haier are among the defendants.

A Beijing-based lawyer surnamed Liu told Xinhua the case largely hinges on the issue of jurisdiction: whether U.S. copyright laws can apply to a product distributed mostly in China.

"The case could more appropriately be handled in China, since the Green Dam's downloading sites, users, downloading servers and developers are all in China," said Liu, who works in a law firm that specializes in intellectual property lawsuits involving foreign nationals.

The dispute occurred last June after a Michigan University report claimed some proprietary codes of the Green Dam software were pirated. But the two developers, the Beijing Dazheng Human Language Technology Academy and Jinhui Computer System Engineering, denied the piracy claim.

Zhang Chenmin, Jinhui's general manager said, "Since all such software blocks popular porn websites, how can you say someone pirated your product because our products block the same websites."

The Chinese government mandated the installation of Green Dam software on all personal computers sold in China in a bid to shield Chinese minors from harmful content, like pornography. But it later made the installment optional amid opposition from foreign businesses and Chinese citizens.

Feng Xiaoqing, an intellectual property law professor with China University of Political Science and Law, told Xinhua that the U.S. court based its ruling on its Long-Arm Statute.

The statute is a state law that allows the state to exercise jurisdiction over an out-of-state defendant, provided that the prospective defendant has sufficient minimum contacts with the forum state.

"The long-arm jurisdiction threatens the jurisdiction and even sovereignty of other countries and has long been under attack worldwide," he said.

He also said Cybersitter's legal action against these leading global PC makers is primarily a commercial maneuver that aims to win more publicity and strike at its competitors.

He called such abuse of intellectual property laws for a purely commercial purpose as "alien" from the original intent of these laws to protect IPR and reward creation.

A judge in a Beijing local court said, anonymously, that the ruling also showed the unjustified worry over China's intellectual property protection record by the U.S.

In fact, the Chinese government has been taking a tough line against IPR infringements. It has stepped up enforcement of IPR protection measures while revising and creating more related regulations and laws.

China is one of only two countries, besides Japan, to have a national IPR strategy. In 2008, it issued an IPR blueprint lasting until 2020 that seeks to raise China's ability to create, use, manage and protect IPR.

Last month China announced a six-month campaign to crackdown on IPR infringements. Noticeably, the campaign will start with the government itself, requiring governments at all levels to use legitimate software.

Meanwhile, the number of IPR lawsuits has been rising quickly over the past few years, which many believe shows China's increasingly stringent enforcement of IPR laws and regulations.

In 2009, Chinese courts handled 36,140 IPR cases, up 30 percent from that in 2008, figures from the SPC show.

The Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People's Court says in a report that the foreign sides won 55 percent of its IPR cases involving foreign nationals between 2002 and 2006. Enditem