A Beijing court yesterday handed down a fine to Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) in compensation for unlicensed e-books appearing in its iTunes App Store. The sum of 1.03 million RMB (US$165,000) goes to eight Chinese writers and two companies affected by the copyright infringement. The Chinese iTunes Store doesn’t sell e-books, and the infringing literature in this case was packaged as apps.
The case started last year when some of the writers noticed their material was being sold via the App Store without their consent. Although a third-party app developer was the one that caused the copyright infringement, the court ruled that Apple also failed to carry out its duties as store owner.
(Source: Xinhua)
