Best selling teen author convicted of plagiarism

Guo Jingming is a 21-year-old author whose novels have made him a small fortune and earned him 100th place on this year's Forbes' Chinese Celebrity list. From Xinhua:

Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People's Court ordered Guo and his publishing company halt publishing the book "Falling Blossoms in Romantic Dream," a story of entangled love between a few youngsters, noted the verdict passed over the weekend.

Sources noted the book has sold more than one million copies and attained a large scale of popularity.

Guo and the publisher are told to pay 200,000 yuan (24,000 US dollars) to the plaintiff 25-year-old Zhuang Yu who claimed Guo's book plagiarized the idea, story, main plots, major characters andlanguage of one of her earlier published books.

The Xinhua story is here. There is a Netease story on the case (in Chinese) here. Previous Danwei posts about Guo Jingming are here (with photo) and here.