A Beijing court has fined search giant a recordBaidu RMB 1 million ($143,000) for copyright violations by its cloud storage and software service, part of the nation’s growing effort to stamp out such behavior as it builds up its own cache of intellectual property, reported Caixin.
The decision by a court in Beijing’s Haidian district also represented the first such court-ordered fine against a third-party cloud operator for the illegal transmission of copyrighted material over its service. Baidu Wangpan, which offers cloud-based data storage and software services, was also ordered to pay RMB 30,000 in costs related to the case to Youku Tudou, one of China’s top online video operators, according to a posting on the court’s website.
The award was well below the RMB 29 million that Youku had been seeking in its lawsuit, and for that reason the plaintiff said it would appeal the decision.
The Baidu case stemmed from illegal transmissions of “Eternal Love,” a popular TV series based on a novel involving intertwined tales of love spanning over thousand years. The series was first broadcast in 2017 on both conventional TV and over Youku’s online video service, and Youku retained the internet broadcasting rights after that.
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