On Monday this week Beijing's No. 1 Intermediate People's Court ruled that Microsoft infringed in the licensing agreements it has with the Chinese technology company, Zhongyi Electronic, which designs Chinese character fonts. The court ordered the software giant to stop selling versions of its Windows operating systems that include fonts designed by this Chinese firm. Under the ruling Microsoft is to cease selling the Chinese versions of its Windows 98, 2000, 2003 and Windows XP. At the moment the date when the ruling takes effect is not disclosed with the number of affected copies also unknown. Meantime, the US company said it will appeal the ruling. In its statement Microsoft says: "Microsoft respects intellectual property rights. We use third party IPs only when we have a legitimate right to do so.” Zhongyi Electronic stated that the agreements signed only permitted Microsoft to use its intellectual property in Windows 95, but that the U.S. tech giant used it in subsequent versions of its Chinese Windows operating systems. "By winning this case against an internationally well-known company like Microsoft, it shows that China, although still a developing country, is taking positive steps to protect intellectual property rights," said Ling Xin Yu, the lawyer for Zhongyi told Reuters. Why, yes, this is truly nice on the part of Chinese justice to protect intellectual property as it has long been the case in many developed countries. Seems like the biggest copyright infringing nation rises to show its yell as an ardent advocate of patents and licenses. SOURCE LINK: http://ecommerce-journal.com/node/25338?drgn=1 Best Regards, Raghavendra R -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.