The Beijing Higher People's Court Wednesday held a hearing on a lawsuit claiming intellectual property infringement against international mobile phone manufacturer Ericsson.
Hanpu Applied Technologies Company, of Dalian, in northeast China's Liaoning Province, sued Ericsson (China) Co., Ltd. and Beijing Ericsson Mobile Communications Co., Ltd. for infringement of the Hanpu's input technology of Chinese characters.
Hanpu is also suing another IT giant, Motorola (China) Electronics Ltd, on the same charge and in the same court.
The plaintiff is asking for compensation worth 10 million yuan (US$1.2 million) from Motorola and five million yuan from Ericsson.
A representative of Ericsson (China) Company Ltd said that the company bought the patented technology for Chinese character inputting from the Canada-based Zi Corporation.
Zi Corporation provides its products and services to international telecom giants such as Zhongxing Telecommunications Equipment Ltd, Xiamen Overseas Electronics, No. 3 Research Institute of the Ministry of Information Industry, Ningbo Bird Co. Ltd. Capital/Mobicom and Konka Group, they said.
Faced with more and more intellectual property entanglements arising from the expanding market economy, China plans to reinforce judicial protection for such rights, court sources said.
(Xinhua 02/28/2001)
