Two leading publishers are battling each other over a claim of copyright infringement.

A Beijing court has started hearing a case filed by Li Shuxi, the former director of Guangming Daily Press, today's Beijing Times reported.

Li is demanding 108,000 yuan (US$15,805) from Huang Shuyuan, director of People Press, who allegedly copied 85 percent of his book "Detecting talents" from Li's work.

Li said he discovered the plagiarism when he bought Huang's book "Detecting talents" in May.

He found that 144,000 characters of the 168,000-character book had been copied from his own book "Li Shuxi's Comment on Strategy in HR Management" which was published in March 2007.

Li said his copyright has been infringed and that the People Press had not fulfilled its responsibility of scrutinizing.

Huang said his book was based on another work, "A mirror of national history" which was published in 1993. The publishing house had an agreement from two of the book's three authors for the new book.

Huang continued to claim that Li had copied part of his book from the 1993 book.

But Li said he had been the third author of the 1993 book and dismissed the claim.

The court did not deliver a verdict.                                       
                                                                                              Source: Shanghai Daily