China shoots itself in to foot as SCE copyright gets rejected

We brought you news several months ago that Sony was taking the manufacturer of a VCD player to the Chinese court, claiming that its design, which is practically identical to the PSOne casing, infringed its design copyright.

The Beijing court on Friday rejected this claim, stating that as the branding and purpose of the VCD player differed from that of the PSOne, in did not directly infringe its copyright and posed no commercial threat.

Although the case isn't thought likely to impact on SCE's recently announced decision to shift all PlayStation 2 production to the region, fears did spring up that it might affect the chances of games machines in general going on sale in the country, notorious for its tolerance of copyright infringement.

Chinas attitudes pose an interesting quandary for console developers. On one hand, it's a huge untapped market, on the other, it's a hotbed of piracy…

It is thought that Sony will continue with its plans to release the PlayStation 2 there within the next quarter, though Microsoft, in a seemingly unrelated incident, announced on Friday that as yet, it has no plans for a Chinese Xbox launch for this year.

More on all this, as we get it.