A Beijing court has ruled that Qihoo 360 Technology, China's leading anti-virus software provider, violated a fair competition protocol against the search engine giant Baidu Inc.

The Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People's Court ordered Qihoo 360 to pay 700,000 yuan (11,000 U.S. dollars) on Thursday in compensation to Baidu, as it violated the Robots.txt protocol.

The industry's internationally recognized rule stipulates one search engine should not acquire information another website operator does not want used.

Baidu sought a total compensation of 100 million yuan from Qihoo 360. The court dismissed its claims other than the 700,000-yuan compensation.
Neither company voiced appeal during the hearing.

Qihoo 360 launched an online search engine in August 2012, which used content from Baidu. The company, however, claimed that the content was provided by Internet users and did not infringe on Baidu's intellectual property rights.

(Source: XinHua)