Chinese games consortium sues Baidu for copyright infringement

A group of Chinese game developers has announced that it intends suing the country’s search giant Baidu for more than 30-million yuan (US$4.7-million) for copyright infringement.

The group, called Content Provider Union (CPU), represents mobile game developers, has accused Baidu of allowing unauthorised downloads of more than 350 games designed by member firms.

CPU is largely made up of small, domestic game developers.

That’s according to Tian Lifeng, a spokesperson for the group, adding that the case has been accepted by a Beijing court.

“We ask for 30 million yuan in compensation because Baidu stole as many as 354 mobile games so far,” she said.

Baidu, which is China’s most popular search engine, has rejected the claims outright, saying that it only provides links to games present on third-party platforms.

Baidu spokesperson Kaiser Kuo, meanwhile, insisted his company was adhering to the law.

“We have never uploaded games to our platform that are in any violation of copyright,” he said.

He added that Baidu has no intention of shutting down the gaming platform.

This is not the first time that Baidu has been accused of violating intellectual property rights.

Earlier this year, it was forced to broker a deal with One Stop China — a consortium of major record labels comprising Universal Music, Warner Music and Sony Music — to distribute their music, putting an end to a prolonged legal battle.

It was also ordered to pay around 500 000 yuan in damages to a literary website after losing a copyright suit.

The Haidan-based Baidu currently controls around 80% of China’s search market.

Like Western counterpart Google, its services do not, however, begin and end with search.

Its other products include Baidu Baike, an online collaboratively built encyclopaedia, and a searchable keyword-based discussion forum.

Although the encyclopaedia is heavily censored by government officials, it is China’s most popular according to visitor numbers.

In July 2011, Baidu Bake had over 3.5-million articles, about 10 times more than Chinese Wikipedia.

The articles are written and edited by registered users and reviewed by behind-the-scenes administrators before release. There is no formal way to contact the administrators. Registered users’ contributions are rewarded in a credit point system.

It also recently announced Baidu Yi, a smartphone operating system, based on Google’s Android OS.

Baidu was the first Chinese firm to be included in the NASDAQ-100 index.