Beijing No.1 Intermediate People's Court has recently announced a decision that orders Beijing Baofeng Network Technology to pay CNY200,000 compensation to the U.S. headquartered Real Networks for copyright infringement.
According to Real Networks, the company developed and published the RealPlayer media player software and owns the copyright of the software and the relevant modules. However, Baofeng Network Technology included the program modules of RealPlayer in its media player software without the approval of Real Networks and provided download service on its website Baofeng.com. The behavior of Baofeng Network Technology infringed the copyright of Real Networks.
The Beijing No.1 Intermediate People's Court says after investigation that on June 1, 2007, Baofeng Network Technology and Kuree Technology signed a business cooperative agreement, according to which Kuree was responsible for design and development of Baofeng audio-visual software and Kuree authorized Baofeng to provide free download service of the software on Baofeng.com. In the Baofeng audio-visual software, 68 program modules had the same names as those of RealPlayer. Baofeng Network Technology used these program modules and provided the download service of the software without the approval of Real Networks, which has constituted copyright infringement. Therefore, the court ordered Beijing Baofeng Network Technology to pay CNY200,000 compensation to Real Networks.
