Apple Loses Another Lawsuit To China

Apple seems to be suing everybody these days. Are they really needing the money that badly? Well get ready, Apple; China is suing you again.

A Chinese court is fining Apple 1 million yuan (nearly $200,000) for hosting third-party applications on its App Store that were selling pirated electronic books, according to the official Xinhua news agency.

Apple is to pay compensation to two companies and eight Chinese writers for copyright violation, the Beijing Number Two Intermediate People’s Court ruled on Thursday.

A group of Chinese authors filed the suit against Apple earlier this year, saying an unidentified number of apps on its App Store sold unlicensed copies of their books.

Bei Zhicheng, a group spokesman, said:

“We are disappointed at the judgment. Some of our best-selling authors only got 7,000 yuan. The judgment is a signal of encouraging piracy.”

Apple spokeswoman Carolyn Wu said:

“We’re always updating our service to better assist content owners in protecting their rights.”

Due to population alone, China has the largest market for online copies of e-books, meaning that if bestselling authors are having their work pirated, the nation is losing a pretty massive chunk of change on the deal.

This isn’t the first of the headaches Apple has suffered on account of China, though. In July, Apple gave 60 million yuan to Proview Technology to settle a long-running lawsuit over the iPad trademark in China, says Yahoo News. While we were joking around about the concept and eventually warming up to it, the Chinese were taking it extremely seriously.

Copyright infringement is no joke, especially in China, and Apple is paying the price.