The Shanghai No. 1 Intermediate People's Court convened on Tuesday to hear a suit brought by the Shanghai Telephone Directory Publishing Corp - a subsidiary of China Telecom - against China Unicom and its overseas partners for their allegedly illegal publication of the local telephone directory, also known as the Yellow Pages.

The case is the first between the country's two telecommunications giants over Yellow Pages publishing rights since China Unicom entered the market in the coastal metropolises of Guangzhou and Shanghai months ago.

Shanghai Telephone Directory Corp announced in court that only the state-run telecommunications company has the right to publish the telephone directory under current Ministry of Information Industry regulations because the directory is a kind of strategic information resource owned by the state.

Overseas enterprises are not allowed to enter the business, according to the regulations.

China Unicom, along with the Hong Kong-based telecommunications company Pacific Century Cyber Works (PCCW) and the United States Yellow Pages marketing company R.H. Donnelley Corp, jointly invested in the publishing of a telephone directory in Shanghai in January.

China Unicom, whose telephone directory is quite similar to that of China Telecom's in content and style, has infringed on the plaintiff's intellectual property rights, according to the lawsuit.

China Telecom is suing for the defendant to cease publishing the phone directory in Shanghai, and for financial compensation.

China Unicom, however, said its telephone directory is permitted by the country's press and publishing authority.

"Breaking monopoly is the historical tide," Li Haiyan, China Unicom's lawyer, said in a local television interview.

The court's publicity department said yesterday that the verdict would come out within six months.

(China Daily August 3, 2002)