Chinese internet giant Baidu is offering emerging Chinese developers a chance to expand their reach to the global market. (Photo : Reuters)
May appears to be a bad month for Chinese search engine Baidu. After facing investigation for the death of a young male with cancer who took a therapy from an online advertisement posted in Baidu, the search giant just lost a lawsuit filed by Dianping.com.
The Pudong New Area People’s Court decided on Thursday in favor of Dianping, a lifestyle information website in China, the unfair competition case it brought against Baidu. It accused Baidu of using its photos and user comments.
Shanghaidaily reported that beside ordering Baidu to remove the images and user comments from its site, the court ordered the search engine to pay Dianping over 3 million yuan in damage. Shanghai Hantao Information Consulting, which owns Dianping, said Baidu’s use of the two since 2012 caused lost web traffic and income.
Besides Baidu, Hantao also sued Shanghai Jietu Software Technology which has a deal with Baidu to use its maps and published the contents from Dianping on its city8.com website. In defending itself, Baidu pointed out that the user comments were not created by Dianping and not legally protected. Jietu also said it was authorized to use Baidu content and should be excluded from the lawsuit.
The court said that Baidu and Dianping’s services are similar which makes them competitors, and using Dianping’s content with no authority cost web traffic loss. But the court absolved Jietu.
Because of the probe on Baidu over the cancer student’s death, shares of the company went down 7.9 percent to $178.91 in early May. David Riedel, president of Riedel Research Group in New York, gave Baidu stock a “hold” rating. He said in a note, “Investors must be wary of this development because if it becomes clear that Baidu has somehow fallen afoul of powerful politicians in Beijing this could be the first of many attacks on the company,” quoted Bloomberg.
It is not the first copyright infringement court loss for Baidu which lost in 2013 in a lawsuit filed by video streaming website Youku Tudou and ordered to pay damage of $78,560 for its illegal hosting of 18 Chinese TV shows.
