California software maker filed a lawsuit against China saying that it has pirated the code to a U. S. software maker's Internet content filtering software.

The Green Dam Youth Escort filtering software installed on personal computers across China incorporates it into the censor-ware that the company uses to block Chinese citizens' access to sites which the government deemed politically undesirable.

And for this the company, Cybersitter LLC filed a suit in federal court in Los Angeles and asked $2.2 billion in damages. “This lawsuit aims to strike a blow against the all-too- common practices of foreign software manufacturers and distributors who believe that they can violate the intellectual property rights of small American companies with impunity without being brought to justice in U. S. Courts”, Greg Fayer, a lawyer representing Cybersitter, said.

The company accused China for defrauding its trade secrets, unfair competition, copyright infringement and civil conspiracy. It also said that Green Dam illegally copied 3,000 lines of code from its program that was designed to prevent children from viewing pornography and violent content on the Web.