Oh, the irony: days after losing its own monopoly abuse suit, Qihoo is getting sued for monopoly abuse

Well, that didn’t take long. Just a couple of days ago, China’s Supreme People’s Court rejected Qihoo 360’s appeal in its anti-monopoly lawsuit against Tencent. Now, the company finds itself back in court, involved in yet another anti-monopoly lawsuit. But this time, Qihoo is the defendant.

Emiage, a Chinese software company that makes mobile apps like a business card app and a chat app based in the user’s mobile address book, has filed a lawsuit against Qihoo 360 for the exact same reason Qihoo sued Tencent: abuse of a monopolistic market position. The suit claims that Qihoo’s mobile security software uses a whitelist, and that any app that sends messages to a phone will have them blocked unless the company has cleared it with Qihoo first. It says that Qihoo’s app is blocking business cards and instant messages that its apps send, harming their functionality. Emiage is asking for RMB 5 million (about US$816,000) in compensation.

The court has yet to begin hearing the case, and Qihoo 360 has not commented publicly on it. Qihoo has lost repeatedly in Chinese courts against its big rivals Baidu and Tencent over the past few years, but it remains to be seen whether Emiage will be successful in its attempt to hand the company yet another legal loss.

(Source: Techweb)