Software maker files $2.2-billion suit alleging piracy in China
A Santa Barbara software maker has filed a $2.2-billion lawsuit against the Chinese government and several Chinese technology firms, accusing them of conspiring to steal and disseminate the U.S. firm’s Internet filtering technology.
Cybersitter, also known as Solid Oak Software Inc., alleged in a federal lawsuit filed Tuesday in Los Angeles that Chinese software makers stole thousands of codes to develop a controversial Internet filtering program that was to be installed on all personal computers in China by July 2009.
The program, known as the Green Dam Youth Escort, was suspended after strong criticism from foreign computer manufacturers, Chinese Internet users, privacy experts and some government officials for its impracticality and threat to privacy.
Green Dam was billed as a filter for pornographic and violent content, much like Cybersitter’s products. But the program also filtered out politically sensitive keywords dealing with Tibetan independence and the Tiananmen Square massacre.
Had it been successfully launched, critics of Beijing’s Internet controls said, it would have been one of the most draconian attempts by China to censor the Web.
The complaint said the Chinese government held a symposium March 11 at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology to discuss how to install Green Dam on PCs.
Present were the remaining defendants: Chinese software makers Zhengzhou Junhui Computer System Engineering and Beijing Dazheng Human Language Technology Academy Co. and computer manufacturers Sony Corp., Lenovo, Toshiba Corp., Acer Inc., AsusTek Computer Inc., BenQ Corp. and Haier Co.
The complaint said the manufacturers included Green Dam with their computers to participate in a government-subsidized program to sell millions of computers in rural regions of China.
An independent study conducted by researchers at the University of Michigan in June discovered “verbatim copying of the Cybersitter content filters,” the lawsuit said.
Some files found in Green Dam included a message to Cybersitter customers to update their software and another to urge them to use a spyware checker, according to the lawsuit.
An attorney for the California company contends that the manufacturers should have stopped selling computers with Green Dam in June when news reports surfaced that the software may have been pirated.
“Rather than stopping, they just kept on going,” said Gregory Fayer, attorney for Cybersitter.
None of the defendants responded to requests for interviews late Tuesday.
Green Dam is still readily available in China and has been downloaded more than 3 million times from 95 Chinese websites. An estimated 53 million home computers have the software.
One unusual detail in the court documents said employees at family-owned Cybersitter reported receiving e-mails from people posing as colleagues. The so-called Trojan e-mails allegedly originated from China and were designed to retrieve information from the company’s servers.
Nicole Liu in The Times’ Beijing Bureau contributed to this report.
