The Chinese travel website Ctrip.com has won a copyright infringement lawsuit against Beijing-based travel search engine company Qunar.com.
According to the decision from Haidian People's Court in Beijing, Qunar.com should stop its copyright infringement activities within ten days, pay relevant notarization fees of CNY1,000 to Ctrip.com and post an apology on the front page of its website for 24 hours.
In April 2008, Ctrip.com found that Qunar.com was copying articles with comments from Ctrip.com in its hotel area. Ctrip.com said that it had been encouraging its members to publish comments on hotels and these comments were arranged by Ctrip.com, which cost a lot of time and energy. These comments had become an important reference and standard for members booking hotels and were valuable information resources of Ctrip.com.
After detecting the copyright infringement by Qunar.com, Ctrip.com sent legal letters to the website on June 19, July 4 and July 11, 2008, asking the website to stop its infringement activities. However, Qunar.com only made some adjustments on the contents copied and did not make any rectification to its practice of illegal data gathering.
In response Ctrip.com sued Qunar.com for illegally stealing hotel comments from its sites. The case was heard by Haidian People's Court of Beijing on November 12, 2008 and the court recently announced its decision that Qunar.com's activity constituted an infringing behavior and Qunar.com should post an apology on the front page of its website for 24 hours and pay the relevant notarization fees and litigation costs.
