A Beijing court has ruled that a Chinese company and its retail shop were guilty of violating the copyright of five U.S. film companies.

The Beijing Second Intermediate People's Court on Monday ordered the Beijing Shiji Haihong Commerce and Trade Company and one of its retail shops to pay damages of 164,000 yuan (20,500 U.S. dollars) to five Hollywood studios including Twentieth Century Fox, Walt Disney, Paramount Pictures, Universal City Studios and Columbia Pictures.

The film studios teamed up to file 16 suits against the defendant for selling DVDs of 16 movies including smash hits like "The 40 Year-Old Virgin", "Mr and Mrs Smith" and "The Incredibles" without copyright authorization, seeking more than 500,000 yuan (62,500 U.S. dollars).

The two defendants failed to appear at Monday's court hearing despite the summons, according to the court. They were tried in absentia.

The court ruled that the film studios hold the copyright of the 16 movies and are protected by Chinese law. The defendants sold DVDs whose copyright was owned by the five film studios and failed to provide legal sources for the DVDs, thus making themselves guilty of copyright violation.

China agreed with the Motion Picture Association of America and other groups to do more to tackle copyright piracy on the internet last Friday.

A Memorandum of Understanding on the Establishment of a Coordination Mechanism For Online Copyright Protection was signed by the National Copyright Administration of China (NCA) and the Motion Picture Association, Business Software Alliance, Association of American Publishers and Britain-based The Publishers Association.

According to the memorandum, all sides will strengthen and improve the authentification of copyright authorization, and communicate on cracking down on transnational online piracy and copyright infringement on a regular basis.

The American and British sides will provide timely lists of their member companies to the NCA to help protect their movies, software, video and audio products and written works.

Last week, China also launched a new campaign against producers and warehouses of pirated movies, books, and software.

Source: Xinhua