【10.1.6 CNN】Cybersitter sues China for piracy

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Cybersitter sues China for piracy

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/BUSINESS/01/06/china.cybersitter.lawsuit.ft/index.html?iref=allsearch

A San Francisco software maker claims the Green Dam anti-censorship program was pirated.



San Francisco (FT) -- A small California company that was one of the first to bring an internet porn filter to market sued the government of China and several major computer companies on Tuesday, accusing them of misappropriating its censorship program for use in the controversial "Green Dam" project.

The family-owned CyberSitter filed suit in the Los Angeles federal court, seeking more than $2.2bn -- the $40 list price of CyberSitter software multiplied by the 56.5m copies of the Green Dam censorship software installed by June, according to the Chinese government.

The case cites violations of trade secret, copyright and unfair competition laws and also names Sony, ACer, Lenovo, Toshiba, Asustek and other hardware and software companies based in China and Taiwan as defendants.

The Chinese government provoked an international uproar after it announced that every personal computer sold in the country would have to include the software, which was made and distributed by local companies.


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While Beijing called it an effort to keep youth from pornography, researchers have discovered that the Green Dam software also blocks users from thousands of websites with content relating to political and religious subjects. A team from the University of Michigan has also found that it contains thousands of lines of code identical to that in the CyberSitter program, which has been sold for 14 years by the Santa Barbara-based company.

Although concerted efforts by computer manufacturers and western governments convinced Beijing not to force the installation of Green Dam, many companies installed it in order to participate in a project distributing subsidised PCs to rural areas in China.

The most explosive charge in the legal complaint is that CyberSitter's corporate computers were subjected to thousands of electronic takeover attempts from within the Chinese Ministry of Health and elsewhere in the country.

The company also claimed that several company employees received individually tailored emails that appeared to be from colleagues. "These emails were designed to retrieve information stored on Solid Oak's computers and send it back to their source," according to the suit.

"This case is about whether international companies can take American intellectual property with impunity if they think the company is small and unable to go after them," said CyberSitter attorney Elliot Gipson.

US Representatives from Sony, Lenovo and Acer did not respond to requests for comment late Tuesday.

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