China sued for stealing code to censor internet

A small US software company is suing the Chinese government and computer hardware giants including Sony and Toshiba for stealing code to use in Beijing's Green Dam project, a 'Big Brother' software programme which censors the internet on any computer in which it is installed.

Cybersitter, formerly known as Solid Oak, accuses the defendants of misappropriation of trade secrets, unfair competition, copyright infringement and civil conspiracy. The lawsuit claims Jinhui Computer System Engineering, the Chinese firm that created Green Dam, copied more than 3,000 lines of code from its eponymous Cybersitter web filtering programme, which is intended to allow parents to monitor their children's internet usage.

Jinhui has denied any wrongdoing, but Cybersitter wants £1.4bn in damages - equal to the cost of 56.5 million copies of its filtering software. The Chinese government says it had installed this number of copies of Green Dam on computers by June 2009.

China caused uproar last year when it said the Green Dam 'censorware' would have to be installed in every PC sold in the country from July. The Communist party claimed the policy was aimed at protecting youngsters from pornography, but researchers found that websites containing political and religious content were also blocked - as well as sexual health information. Green Dam computers were also more susceptible to hacking.

International and domestic pressure – as well as lawsuits – forced the Chinese government into a humiliating U-turn, but not before the likes of Toshiba, Sony, Acer and Lenovo had already installed Green Dam on millions of PCs in a bid to be part of a government-sponsored initiative to supply subsidised computers to the rural poor.

The claims in Cybersitter's lawsuit regarding the alleged conspiracy are impressive. Chinese institutions, including its health ministry, are accused of attempting to hack into Cybersitter's servers. Trojan emails are alleged to have been sent "to retrieve information stored on Solid Oak's computers and send it back to their source". Damningly, the suit claims that the defendants continued to develop and distribute Green Dam knowing it contained stolen code.

The suit highlights the problems for companies desperate to gain a slice of China's huge consumer market - but which often have to sacrifice democratic principles. In the past, companies, such as Google which censors internet search results on behalf of the Chinese government, only had public outrage to contend with: the possibility of lawsuits is a whole new headache.

Cybersitter's lawyer said: "This lawsuit aims to strike a blow against the all-too-common practices of foreign software manufacturers and distributors who believe that they can violate the intellectual property rights of small American companies with impunity without being brought to justice in US courts."

None of the defendants has yet commented on the suit. ·