Writer wins Sohu copyright case

SHANGHAI: A Shanghai court has ordered a major web portal to compensate a cell phone message writer 100,000 yuan ($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.