China Shuts Down Internet Search Engine Gougou.com

China has officially closed down Gougou.com which is a local search engine. This search engine had been put on the blacklist by the US due to its reputation of carrying a lot of pirate content. BBC reported this Thursday that Gougou.com which was run by Xunlei, a Chinese web firm was shut down. The search engine had plans to get listed in US stock exchange.

According to analysts, this closure of the search engine might be part of a renewed attempt to float bids on the US stock exchange again. The closure followed a move against the search engine several weeks ago for copyright reasons. The search engine was included in the report of US Trade Representative which is a list of major copyright offenders.

A statement that followed the closure was made by the Gougou team. It said, "Gougou.com has been closed down. Thank you all for your support, and we are sorry for any inconvenience,"

China had announced last week that the country had reinforced its laws to put a stop to malicious trademark registrations in the country. China cracked down on a number of cases in order to address the grievances of big foreign brands. IPR (Intellectual Property Rights) violations happening since 2008, amounting to nearly 30,000 cases were severely dealt with.

According to Chen Sixi who is a member of NPC Standing Committee, the precedents undertaken for establishing military courts and maritime courts have been successful. He said that the same experience may help deal with IPR cases too.