China's 5fad Sues Baidu Over Music Copyrights in U.S. Court

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on June 11, 2008 - 10:36am.

Hanhzhou, China - Chinese digital music distributor 5fad.com announced on Wednesday that it has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against leading Chinese search engine Baidu (NASD: BIDU) in federal court in New York. Baidu has been the target of a number of lawsuits from record labels in its home country of China, but this suit filed by 5fad appears to be the first such action to be accepted for review by a U.S. federal court, in this case the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

The labels take issue with Baidu for providing "deep links" in its search results to unauthorized song downloads hosted on third-party sites.

In February, the local arms of major labels Universal Music, Sony (NYSE: SNE) BMG and Warner Music (NYSE: WMG) filed copyright litigation against Baidu in China; EMI partnered with Baidu in January 2007 to launch an ad-supported streaming music service.

"This litigation will be a cornerstone in China's Intellectual Property protection cases," said Wu Duanping, CEO of 5fad.com.

Founded in 2003, Hangzhou, China-based 5fad.com claims to host the largest library of copyrighted Chinese songs available on a digital music service.

The company is seeking declaratory, injunctive and monetary relief for willful copyright infringement from Baidu.

Pacific Epoch reports that Baidu has responded to the lawsuit in a letter, which claims that this would make for the sixth lawsuit filed by 5fad against the company.

Two of these suits were withdrawn by 5fad, while another was thrown out of court, and the Beijing Higher People's Court found in Baidu's favor in a fourth case, Baidu says in the letter.