Beijing Municipal High People's Court released 2011 Beijing top ten IP cases on Feb.28, in which, five were on copyright.

In addition, among the ten cases, five were directly and indirectly associated with violations via the Internet, indicating that the development of the Internet had a great impact on IP protection.

3Q legal battle topped other cases as the fiercest one. The court ordered Qihoo, the maker of popular Chinese anti-virus software 360, to apologize to the Internet service provider Tencent and pay 400,000 yuan in compensation.

In the case where Kaixin001.com sued Oak Pacific for its infringement of Kaixin001’s trademark, the court ruled that the defendant Oak Pacific, owner of a social networking site Kaixin.com illegally used the similar name to Kaixin001.com that would easily mislead the consumers and ordered it to pay 400,000 yuan in compensation.

In the first case on intangible cultural heritage protection in China, although the court dismissed the action brought by the plaintiff who filed a lawsuit against a Chinese famous director Zhang Yimou over local opera of Anshun (安顺地戏) played in his film named Riding Alone For Thousands Of Miles, the legal outcome still helped clarify the judicial interpretation in this regard.

(Source:IPR in China)