In a lawsuit filed in the federal court in Los Angeles on Tuesday, a California-based software maker, Cybersitter LLC, has sued China and seven major computer makers, accusing them of piracy of its Internet filtering software.

Saying that China's Green Dam Youth Escort filtering program, which has been installed on the personal computers in the country, breached its copyright, Cybersitter has sought $2.2 billion in damages.

Alleging that the Chinese illegally copied 3,000 lines of its codes and integrated them with software that blocked the access of the Chinese citizens to the so-called 'politically undesirable' sites, Cybersitter said in its filing that seven computer manufacturers - including Sony, Lenovo, Acer, and Toshiba - contributed to the distribution of the Chinese program with their PCs sold in the country.

The Cybersitter complaint said that though the Chinese government said in June that it would not mandate the Green Dam, the program is not only being widely distributed in China, but is also being promoted by the authorities.

In a statement elaborating the grounds for the lawsuit, Cybersitter's lawyer Greg Fayer said: "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."