TIPS^®  Taiwan Intellectual Property Special

China Updates

Alibaba Loses Lawsuit Against Music Companies

Alibaba, the parent company of Yahoo China, lost its copyright infringement lawsuit filed by 11 music companies. The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) represented these 11 companies, which include multinational recording giants, namely Universal Music Group, Warner Music, EMI, and Sony BMG, to sue Yahoo China for illegally providing downloading links for 223 songs from 47 labels without permission. The plaintiffs requested damages of $5.5 million RMB over the downloading service that infringed their copyright. Even though Alibaba defended that its service merely provided a hyperlink service rather than downloading, and should not be held responsible for contents of third-party websites, Beijing Second Intermediate People’s Court still concluded that Alibaba infringed the rights of the music companies and ordered Alibaba to pay $210,000 RMB, and remove the hyperlinks immediately. Alibaba has decided to appeal the case.

A similar case against China’s leading search engine, Baidu.com, was also filed by the IFPI, but Baidu.com won the first instance. The IFPI has made an appeal for the ruling.