Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc., said Thursday that a Taiwan court has found a book company in that country and two of its officials guilty of pirating Britannica's published works. In a statement, the Chicago-based Britannica said the Criminal Division of the Taipei District Court returned guilty verdicts Tuesday against the Tan Ching Book Company, its president, Tu Chich-hsiang and its chairman, Chang Yu-ping, for pirating the 10-volume Concise Encyclopaedia Britannica. The CEB, first published in Beijing, is a condensed Chinese translation of Britannica's Micropaedia, the ready-reference section of Encyclopaedia Britannica's 15th Edition, the company said. Tu and Chang each was sentenced to one year in prison and fined, Britannica said. ``We are gratified that the Taiwan court has upheld Britannica's ownership rights and respected its copyright by enforcing Taiwan law,'' said Frank Gibney, vice president of Britannica's Board of Editors, in the statement. ``This is a great step forward in protecting intellectual property rights on an international level throughout the Pacific Basin,'' he said. Last year, the company charged the Tan Ching Book Company with producing an unauthorized Chinese-language edition of the Britannica. The publisher not only refused to stop production, but advertised the edition heavily in Taiwan newspapers, Britannica said. Britannica filed a complaint against Tan Ching in February, and Taiwan police conducted a raid in which more than 56,000 bindings and thousands of complete volumes of a pirated verision of the Chinese-language CEB were seized. Britannica reached agreement in late 1987 with Chung Hwa Book Company of Taipei to publish the authorized version of the CEB in Taiwan, the company said, and Chung Hwa already has issued five volumes of the 20-volume CEB.
