November 21, 2006

Baidu, China's biggest Internet search engine has been cleared of copyright infringement violations by a court in Beijing.

The search engine company faced lawsuits from music companies after posting links to certain Web sites offering illegal music downloads.

However, the court ruling said the service did not constitute an infringement as the music was downloaded from Web servers owned by third parties, China's state press reported.

This overturns an earlier court ruling, which had ordered Baidu to pay an EMI Records distributor 68,000 yuan (£8,400).

Record companies including EMI, Sony BMG, Warner Music and Universal Music had demanded a public apology from Baidu, the immediate suspension of its download service and 1.73m yuan ($216,250) in monetary compensation.

Baidu argued the MP3 search engine it provided was the same as other search engines providing links to web pages, news, information and photos.

"If the music industry had won, the whole search engine sector would have come to a halt," Xinhua news agency quoted a Baidu spokesman as saying.

The report said the music record companies would appeal against the ruling.

Source: China Tech News