CHINABYTE Technology Co, a leading Chinese wireless value-added service provider and IT portal, yesterday sued Baidu.com, China's most used online search engine, for allegedly manipulating search results that constitute "unfair competition".

A Beijing court accepted the unfair competition lawsuit. ChinaByte, the plaintiff, demanded correction of the search result error, an apology and 30,000 yuan (US$3,750) compensation for its economic losses.

"It's not money that we want. We just want to remind Baidu that as a reputed search engine in China, it should respect the rules and be responsible to Web users," said Fan Feng, vice president of Beijing-based ChinaByte.

It happened when ChinaByte heard complaints from Web users that when they searched for ChinaByte's downloading service "Tianji Xiazai", or Huajun's downloading service "Huajun Xiazai", the top results provided by Baidu were for Tiankong (Skycn.com), which has been acquired by Baidu, according to ChinaByte.

Baidu denied any wrongdoing and said the problem was a result of editing mistakes by ChinaByte and Huajun and insisted ChinaByte was just trying to get more publicity by playing up this incident.

Officials refused to comment more on the matter yesterday.

"The verbal attack from ChinaByte has hurt Baidu's reputation and we will also seek legal procedures," said Baidu in a statement last week.

Baidu's market share in China has risen in the past year to 62.1 percent from about 52 percent in 2005.

Editor: Yan