“A Beijing court ordered Apple Inc. to pay 1.03 million yuan, or about $165,000, to a group of local writers who said the U.S. gadget maker sold unlicensed copies of their books online, according to state media,” Carlos Tejada reports for The Wall Street Journal.
“The state-run Xinhua news agency said Thursday that the Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People’s Court ordered Apple to pay the money to eight Chinese writers and two companies for violating their copyrights,” Tejada reports. “Attorneys for the writers had argued that software available from Apple’s app store contained unlicensed digital copies of their books.”
Tejada reports, “The group originally asked for 10 million yuan in damages, according to Xinhua.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Damn, nearly an entire second of Apple Inc.’s profits gone, just like that!
Did Apple ‘know’ about that these were unlicensed copies ?
Doubt it. I guess China has shysters just like us here in North America.
And just like here, it’s known as the government.
amen, brother.
No, these were apps.
Of course, if you want to find out more, you have to subscribe to the website. Thanks for that.
don’t give The Wall Street Urinal a dime.
Sadly China is the nation with the largest Intelligence theft on the world. No one there cares what copyright or patent you steal unless you area outside company with money. Then they care.
Sad. So sad.
The idea that the PRC has a court which has jurisdiction over copyright is possibly the very definition of irony.
Smells to me like fabricated commie propaganda to divert the attention from the continuous IP infringements happening there. One Chinese guy rips off the IP of the other one and Apple (the western devil) is the bad guy there.
I am laughing that a chinese court is going after Apple for “copyright” from several authors. Funny how this seems to be a one way street and when other countries complain, the usual response is that “this is China, you laowai (foreigners) do not understand Chinese law”.
Coming from a country where fakes and piracy is common, this ruling seems to be ironic at the very least and and disingenuous at worst. Funny how everything in the world is suddenly feeling like Alice in Wonderland.