UPDATE 1-U.S. company accuses China of stealing software

(Updates with company confirmation, previous CHICAGO)

By Dan Whitcomb

LOS ANGELES, June 13 (Reuters) - A California software publisher will seek an injunction preventing U.S. companies from shipping computers with Chinese anti-pornography software it says was stolen, the company's president said on Saturday.

Solid Oak Software Inc said it found pieces of its CyberSitter Internet-filtering software in the Chinese program, including a list of terms to be blocked and instructions for updating the software.

Brian Milburn, president of the privately owned, Santa Barbara-based company, said it was studying its legal options but would seek an injunction against further shipment to China of computers using the suspected pirated software.

"I look at it this way, if we were shipping iPods over to China and China says, 'We want all these pirated songs on the iPods when you ship them to us,' don't you think somebody would be up in arms about that?" Milburn said.

"It's the same thing. They are stealing proprietary copyrighted material from us, sending it over to the U.S. and saying, 'We want this on all the computers you send us.'" Milburn said. "Just because we are a small company doesn't make the theft of CyberSitter any less (wrong)."

The Chinese company that made the filtering software, Jinhui Computer System Engineering Inc, denied stealing anything to The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the story.

"That's impossible," Jinhui's founder, Bryan Zhang, told the newspaper.