Chinese Court Fines Apple For Copyright Violations

hackingbear writes "The Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People's Court ruled in favor of a group of Chinese authors, and Apple will have to pay them in excess of 730,000 yuan (US$118,000) for infringement. Apple had not gotten permission before selling their books on the Apple App Store, it noted. These cases were the second batch of lawsuits filed against Apple by the Writers' Right Protection Union, which includes prominent members like prolific blogger and novelist Han Han who have become a pop culture star through his creative and cynical writings criticizing the (Chinese) government."

Re:So...

[SmSlDoo]

My guess is that it is a ploy by the Chineese government to force the works to be removed from the App Store.

If they requested directly to have the works removed they would get denied, but if they claim infringement towards the author they can get traction.

Passing off

[tepples]

Did Apple steal other people's ideas, or did someone else defraud Apple by submitting someone else's work to iBooks as his or her own? I'm getting hints from an article in China Daily [chinadaily.com.cn] that it may have been the latter.