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New Oriental guilty of copyright violation
The Beijing-based New Oriental Education Group was exempted from a charge of trademark infringement on two US-based educational institutions but is guilty of copyright violation. New Oriental, a leading private English-training institution, was ordered to pay 6.4 million yuan (US$774,000) in compensation to the plaintiffs -- the Educational Testing Service (ETS) and the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC). The judgment, which is the second and final verdict in a highly watched case, was announced by the Beijing High People's Court on Monday. The amount awarded in compensation is 3.6 million yuan (US$435,000) less than granted in the first judgment delivered a year ago. "We fully recognize the legal judgment. We have learnt a lot in the lawsuit and made many efforts in the protection of intellectual property rights (IPR)," said a press officer with New Oriental who declined to be named. The officer said New Oriental admits several instances of past wrongdoing that violated the intellectual property rights of the two US institutions. The group has stopped copying materials owned by ETS and GMAC and is willing to become a forerunner in IPR protections in China. The New Jersey-based ETS and Virginia-based GMAC could not immediately be reached for comment. The lengthy lawsuit was started in January 2002 when ETS and GMAC claimed New Oriental had copied a mass of exam papers for the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL), Graduate Record Examination (GRE) and Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT). The three exams are widely regarded by Chinese students as a stepping stone to enrolment in American universities. Thousands of students come to New Oriental for special training every year mainly because they can get the exam papers that are hard to find elsewhere in China. ETS and GMAT, the developers and sponsors of the exams, charged that New Oriental had infringed on their copyrights and trademarks. The Beijing No 1 Intermediate People's Court supported the accusation by ETS and GMAC and ordered that New Oriental pay 10 million yuan (US$1.2 million) in compensation for copyright and trademark infringements in its first adjudication last September after a two-year long trial. However, the Beijing High People's Court ruled that New Oriental did not encroach on the trademark ownerships of the two US institutions because the former used TOEFL, GRE and GMAT on its publications only as the names of the tests rather than business brands. Zhou Qiang, a lawyer representing ETS and GMAC in the case, told China Daily that the ruling also ordered New Oriental to hand in all illegal copies of ETS and GMAC materials. Officials at New Oriental must also publish a public apology to the two US institutions in the Chinese newspaper Legal Daily. |
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