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Updated Monday, October 1, 2007 0:00 am TWN, AFP

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French firm to pay US$44 mil. in patent case

BEIJING -- An eastern China court has ordered a French electrical company to pay 330 million yuan (US$44 million) for infringing the copyright of a Chinese enterprise, a company official and state press said Sunday.

In a Saturday ruling, the Wenzhou intermediate court in Zhejiang province ordered Schneider Electric to pay 330 million yuan in compensation to the Chint Group for patent infringement of its low-voltage electrical equipment, the Beijing News reported.

The amount of compensation is believed to be the highest in China in an intellectual property rights case, the paper said.

“We absolutely disagree with this decision, it is absolutely unreasonable,” Guy Dufraisse, director of China operations for Schneider Electric told AFP.

“Schneider Electric is a world leader in this technology, we will appeal this decision immediately to the Zhejiang high court.”

Schneider was found guilty of violating patents of five models of Chint equipment, in which it earned 883.6 million yuan in revenues from the production and sales of the machinery from August 2004 to July 2006, the paper said.

Schneider was ordered to pay the compensation within 10 days, it added. Dufraisse said that Schneider was also suing Chint for copyright infringement in cases both inside and outside China.

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