News and Events

Tri Viet (First News) Publishing House has won a court case against foreign language study centres over a second series of book copyright violations.

The results of the case were announced at the press conference on September 26 in the presence of US Consulate General in HCM City Economic Officer Ray Nayler, representatives of the Vietnam-Australia Society English Centre, the local department of information and communications and lawyers.

Director of Vietnam-Australia Society English Centre Le Thanh Hao issued a public apology and agreed to compensate the publishing house with VND390 million (USD18,722).

The pirated books have been blatantly photocopied and sold at many training centres. In 2009, 2010 and 2011, Tri Viet had discovered that various localities had copied Tri Viet books and CDs. Tri Viet had bought the publishing rights from the US-based Compass Media Company.

In July, Tri Viet publicly announced the names of those training centres and printing establishments in HCM City that had produced the pirated teaching materials but they were ignored. On June 4, HCM City's Australia International Language School apologised for the use of the pirated materials and paid VND380 million to the publishing company in compensation. This was the first lawsuit related to publishing copyright infringement in Vietnam.

At the press conference, head of Tri Viet Publishing House Nguyen Van Phuoc said he would continue to pursue lawsuits against the Huy Thi publishing house and Vietnam American International School, one of Hanoi’s biggest English language training centres.

He said the Compass Media had also completed the procedure to authorise Tri Vet to continue the lawsuits in Vietnam.

"We'll pursue every infringement through the courts. We don't want the training centres to go bankrupt and we also want to reach a co-operation agreement in the future. We'll spent VND100 million from the money we receive in compensation on scholarships for poor but hard-worked students." Phuoc said.