A Shanghai court has ordered a major web portal to compensate a
cell phone message writer 100,000 yuan (US$13,315) for using his
work without paying.
The web portal, Sohu.com violated Fu Zhanbei's copyright by
providing 190 pieces of his short messages on its website for
purchase after a contract between the two expired, not paying him
anything, the Shanghai No. 2 Intermediate People's Court,
heard.
It is the country's first known court case dealing specifically
with copyright violation of short messages.
The contract between the two parties expired in March 2006, but
some of Fu's works were still available on the website in June this
year. Sohu charged mobile phone users 0.2 yuan for each message it
sent them.
Fu filed a lawsuit and asked 3 million yuan in compensation from
the company. His lawyer claimed in a hearing in August that they
calculated the compensation according to Sohu's published income
from selling the short message service (SMS). In the second quarter
of 2004, Sohu received $11.3 million from its wireless services and
80 percent of them came from SMS.
And Fu, a self-proclaimed writer of poems, film and TV scripts,
said that one piece of well-written message could be sold to
thousands of people and he should be allowed to sell one message to
several websites at the same time.
But the court said that argument was not enough to prove Fu lost
3 million yuan in potential earnings. The court also ordered
yesterday the website to publish an apology for 48 consecutive
hours in its short message channel.
Fu, 39, from Jinhua, Zhejiang Province, told China Daily
yesterday that he was disappointed with the result.
"(The compensation of) 100,000 yuan will not intimidate Sohu
from conducting more violations in the future," he said.
He is undecided about whether he would appeal to a higher court.
But he said he would continue defending his intellectual property
rights by filing more suits against more websites.
"Because websites often use our (cell-phone message writers)
works without paying," he said.
He declined to reveal which websites he would sue next.
According to a recent report, subscribers of China Mobile, one
of the two mobile service operators, sent and received nearly 1
billion short messages every day in 2006.
Li Jingchuan, Sohu's attorney, said that he had not discussed
with his client about appealing.
(China Daily September 14, 2007)