HCM City’s police on March 22 searched the Quynh Mai Bookstore on Nguyen Thi Minh Khai street and seized 18,000 pirated books.

Police searched the Quynh Mai bookstore on March 22.

This is the biggest case of book piracy thus far in Vietnam.

The case came to light in July 2009 when six foreign publishers, including Oxford, Cambridge, Pearson Education, Cengage Learning, McGraw Hill and Macmillan, announced at a press conference held by Vietnam’s Fahasa company in HCM City that 393 book titles were pirated in Vietnam. Up to 334 titles were distributed by Quynh Mai Bookstore in cooperation with Dong Nai Publishing House.

On December 7, 2009, inspectors of the HCM City Department of Information and Communications found thousands of pirated book titles at Quynh Mai bookstore and Hoa Mai Printing Company, both owned by lawyer Luong Vinh Kim. Nearly 38,800 books, mainly English teaching books, were seized.

HCM City police in March 2010 began legal proceedings against Hoa Mai Printing Company and searched their headquarters.

On March 22, police discovered an additional 18,000 pirated books at this company.

HCM City police are investigating this large-scale book piracy case.

PV