The company had sent “cease and desist” letters to HP and Dell warning them that they would face damages if they went ahead, said Brian Milburn, Solid Oak CEO, in a phone interview. “They will receive the letters today (Tuesday), and I hope to hear from them later today,” he said.

 

The California-based company’s step puts the world’s two largest PC vendors in a dilemma, as Beijing has notified PC companies that it requires all PCs sold in China from July 1 to include Green Dam/Youth Escort, a censorship software commissioned by the Chinese government.

 

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology awarded a Rmb41m ($6m) contract to Jinhui Computer System Engineering and Dazheng Language Technology, two domestic software firms, in May 2008 for developing a programme that could block pornographic and other “harmful” internet content.

 

Earlier this year, the government ordered all schools to install the programme on their computers, and required PC makers to include the software on all machines sold under a government subsidy programme for rural PCs.

 

Last month, the ministry notified PC makers that they would be required to supply Green Dam/Youth Escort with every new PC sold in China as of July1, either by pre-installing it on the hard drive or by including it in the software package that comes with the PC.

 

The industry has expressed its concern over the move as engineers say tests show the software could be used for spying and has a wide range of censorship capabilities, although the government and Jinhui claim it is for the “protection” of young internet users only.

 

Test reports by Chinese engineers, researchers from the University of Michigan and by the Open Net Initiative all concluded that parts of the code of the Chinese programme appeared to be copied from Cybersitter, a leading programme for parental control of internet access developed by Solid Oak.

 

Mr Milburn said that following these revelations, Jinhui appeared to have erased these parts from the code in an update launched late last Friday. “But we have a number of other places where we think there is infringement, which have not been published,” he said.

 

Mr Milburn said he had received a number of offers from Chinese groups opposing Beijing’s move for assistance in taking legal action in the country. “If our code is being used to censor a country, we stand up to things like that,” he said. But he added that Solid Oak was still considering whether legal action in China was feasible.

 

“If we can’t stop [HP and Dell from shipping] I guess the only way to resolve this would be an interim licensing agreement,” he said.