Labels Sue Telecoms

The Recording Industry Association of Vietnam has filed a lawsuit against FPT Telecom and Nokia Vietnam for violations of intellectual property rights, specifically copyrights of recorded music.

RIAV has accused FPT Telecom of sharing recorded music over the Internet and using copyrighted material without permission on its Internet television service, IPTV.

When the two parties could not reach a settlement on the complaint, RIAV also filed suit against Nokia Vietnam for allowing its cell phone customers to download 1,000 songs from a database of more than 10,000 songs operated by FPT Telecom.

Nokia has since blamed FPT Telecom for the infringement, saying that FPT had told Nokia that it held legal rights for all the music content on its Web site.

RIAV acknowledged that Nokia was perhaps misled in the affair but that it is trying to avoid responsibility nonetheless.