Beijing-based Caixin Media Co, which provides financial and business news, filed lawsuits against four portals in China for unauthorized reprints of its news reports.
Caixin found that some media organizations, including the four websites, copied its stories without authorization shortly after the reports were published in January 2014. Caixin issued an infringement notice to denounce the reprints, according to the media company's website.
It also entrusted lawyers to stop infringement of its copyrights, but the involved media did not respond, according to the company.
Caixin decided to sue four of the media organizations, including ifeng.com, the website of Phoenix TV, as they had more unauthorized reprints than other outlets and it would be easier to deal with them as they were in Beijing, said Ma Ling, director of brand communication at Caixin.
Beijing Haidian District People's Court heard the case between Caixin and ifeng.com on March 30.
Caixin demanded the defendant stop using its stories without authorization and pay 26,000 yuan ($4,200) as compensation for losses, notarization fees and counsel fees.
The portal argued that it did not use the plaintiff's stories with malice and said most of the reprints were from a partner website so they had no idea the stories were written by Caixin reporters.
The defendant also said that the stories involved in the case did not have much creative content as they were mainly about current affairs and such works are in fact not copyrighted.
The Copyright Law allows media to use such works without authorization except when publishers specify they do not accept reprints. Caixin stated on its website as well as in print that it does not allow unauthorized reprints, Zhang Yan, an attorney for Caixin, rebutted.
Zhang added that ifeng.com could not prove its partnership with a third-party website.
The two reached an out-of-court settlement later on the same day and ifeng.com apologized to Caixin via its website.
The portal said it deleted the reprinted stories after receiving the infringement notice from Caixin and punished staff involved.
Ma said that another portal, sohu.com, agreed to a settlement with Caixin before a court hearing and the two agreed to cooperate on copyright issues.
"Sohu has long respected intellectual property rights," said Chen Zhaohua, chief editor of the website. "And copyright cooperation between Sohu and Caixin will be profound."
The court in Haidian delayed hearings of the other two cases due in late March, according to Ma.
It was not the first time that Caixin filed lawsuits for unauthorized reprints. It sued cnfol.com, a financial news website based in Fujian province, in 2013 and Fuzhou Intermediate People's Court ruled the website infringed Caixin's copyrights and should pay 9,500 yuan as compensation.
Zhang told Procuratorial Daily that Caixin did not file the lawsuits purely to get some compensation, but to clarify its attitude against infringement of copyright in news reports and to work towards a better copyright protection environment.
Zhan Jiang, a journalism professor at Beijing Foreign Studies University, told China Daily that the cost of lawsuits for media organizations to protect their works was high and even if they succeed the compensation they get is possibly much lower than the cost.
"It may be more cost-effective and useful to criticize unauthorized reprints via media than file lawsuits to protect news reports copyright," he said.
Many media organizations reprint news stories without authorization because they lack awareness of the law and possibly don't think it is an immoral act, Zhan said.
Zhang Yan said that filing lawsuits is the last resort, suggesting other solutions including moral criticism, negotiation and complaint filings could be used to stop unauthorized reprints.
songmengxing@chinadaily.com.cn
(China Daily 04/09/2015 page17)
