A Chinese-language news service in Las Vegas has hit a competitor with a lawsuit alleging copyright infringement.
The Las Vegas Chinese News Network, which has print and online publications, filed suit Friday in U.S. District Court against Sunshine Publishing Inc., dba Las Vegas Chinese Daily News, and owner Helen Hsueh.
The Las Vegas Chinese News Network charged in the complaint that it owns a literary work called “The Moving of the River of Life Christian Church.’’
The suit claims the defendants on March 25 displayed an unauthorized copy of this piece in their newspaper and on their website.
The Las Vegas Chinese News Network is represented in the lawsuit by attorneys with the Las Vegas law firm Marquis Aurbach Coffing.
Hsueh, in an interview, denied the copyright infringement allegations and said her company will be contesting the lawsuit.
She noted her company is already in litigation in Clark County District Court with Chih Ou Wu, aka Kent Wu, of the Las Vegas Chinese News Network.
Sunshine Publishing sued Wu in the state court in February 2010, charging that after he was fired as editor and general manager of the Las Vegas Chinese Daily News in late 2009, he used information obtained from that job to unfairly start his competing company and ended up costing the Las Vegas Chinese Daily News numerous advertising contracts.
Wu denied those allegations and hit Hsueh with a counterclaim saying he was a shareholder of Las Vegas Chinese Daily News, that Hsueh had no right to fire him and that Hsueh had engaged in "self dealing’’ by providing free ads in the Las Vegas Chinese Daily News to clients of her separate business, the Las Vegas Chinese Business Directory; and by diverting other newspaper company assets and funds to this directory.
Hsueh denied those allegations and the litigation is continuing.
The copyright lawsuit is one of at least five involving copyrights or trademarks filed in federal court in Las Vegas since May 31.
On June 8, Peter Lik USA Inc. filed suit against Michael Austin alleging copyright and trademark infringement.
That suit alleges Austin lives in Phoenix and has a website, fliplik.com, an auction site that Peter Lik USA claims displays material infringing on the rights of Peter Lik.
The suit says Lik is a world-renowned landscape photographer and that his company is based in Las Vegas.
Lik is represented in the lawsuit by attorneys with the Las Vegas office of the law firm Lewis and Roca LLP.
Austin could not be located for comment.
And the owner of the Golden Nugget hotel-casinos in Las Vegas and Laughlin filed three more suits alleging website operators have been infringing on its trademarks.
The latest defendants are:
-- Hilary Moore, believed to be living in Annemasse, France. The suit says she has a website called www.seventysevengoldennuggets.com.
-- Harald Ebert, believed to be in Can Garriga, Spain, with a website called www.goldennugget.info.
-- Marco Eckstein, believed to be in Helmbrechts, Germany, with a site called golden-nugget-jackpot.com.
None of those defendants have answered the lawsuits against them.
These latest lawsuits over the Golden Nugget trademarks are on top of suits filed in April and May against operators of websites with apparent deliberate misspellings of the Golden Nugget name: thegoldennuggett.com and www.golddennugget.com.
The Nevada Golden Nuggets are represented in the lawsuits by attorneys with the Las Vegas office of the law firm Greenberg Traurig LLP.
Ryan Gile, a Las Vegas attorney active in trademark cases, commented on the Golden Nugget cases in a June 1 blog post http://www.vegastrademarkattorney.com/.
Noting the five cases, Gile asked: "Is this perhaps a sign of the improving economy that a gaming company is willing to invest the money to pursue such lawsuits in order to obtain (and/or prevent others from using) domain names of questionable value?"