Mr. Chambers Yang wrote independently an academic paper named Study on Legal Issues of Domain Name and Its Management in 2001, elaborating several legal issues on disputes of domain name and management of registration of it. Mr. Yang has the copyright to the paper. As his master thesis, Mr. Yang uploaded this paper on this website, and made announcement of prohibition of editing and reproduction without permission.

In the middle of June, 2002, some keypals discovered some famous websites used Mr. Yang’s work. Later, Mr. Yang visited these websites, finding two articles on June 10^th, 2002 of one website infringed on his copyrights. One of articles named Domain Name: Powder Keg All Around the Globe with about 4,000 words plagiarized from Mr. Yang’s thesis except the first paragraph of about 200 words. This article was without author’s name, but only announcing in the end “parts of this article are excerpted from Chambers Yang’s Study on Legal Issues of Domain Name and Its Management”. The other passage called System of Registration of Domain Name in China with about 1,000 words, plagiarized totally from the thesis of Mr. Yang, author’s name not indicated. After that, over 20 well-known websites reprinted one of the aforesaid infringing articles, and it even became popular on some websites.

These websites’ plagiarizing Mr. Yang’s thesis and reproducing the infringing article infringed on his various legitimate rights and interests including the right of signature, the right of alternation and the right to network dissemination of information. For the purpose of protecting his rights and interests, Mr. Yang files a suit against these websites pursuant to the Copyright Law and relevant judicial interpretations of the Supreme Court, demanding judgment against defendants for stopping of infringement, removing the infringing article on their respective websites, publishing announcements on their home pages for making apologies and eliminating effects of their infringing acts, and compensating for losses of Mr. Yang. The No. 2 Intermediate People’s Court has accepted the case.