Beijing No.1 Intermediate People's Court has announced that Microsoft was found guilty of infringing the intellectual property rights of Zhongyi Electronic Limited in China.
On April 23, 2007, Zhongyi Electronic Limited sued Microsoft for using Zhongyi's "Zheng Ma" input method in its Windows operating systems without payment for ten years. Zhongyi Electronic Limited is the copyright owner of the "Zheng Ma" input method and it also owns the copyrights of the Song typeface and its bold typeface, covering about 40,000 Chinese characters.
According to the statement of Beijing No.1 Intermediate People's Court, Microsoft has infringed the copyrights of Zhongyi's typefaces, but it does not constitute an infringement for using the "Zheng Ma" input method. The court asked Microsoft China to stop selling products that include Zhongyi's typefaces, including Windows 98 second edition, Windows 2000 Chinese professional edition, Windows XP Chinese family edition, and Windows XP Chinese professional edition.
However, no compensation was ordered by the court. There is no word yet on how this legal action will impact Microsoft's services in China.
Microsoft, The Global Giant in Software, uses strict copyright laws to prevent others from copying it's software has a history of copying others software and incorporating it into the Microsoft product. Microsoft borrowed the tcp/ip, C++, java, and other software from the Unix/Linux environment; but, doesn't like the open software market from which it was built upon.