Leading Chinese internet search company baidu.com is to appeal against a Beijing court ruling requiring it to pay compensation to a unit of EMI over downloads of pirated pop music, according to a report in the Financial Times.

Baidu's legal counsel said that the court ruling was based on a " misunderstanding of the search engine technology" used by the company in its MP3 search service.

Last week the court ordered Baidu to stop giving users access to pirated songs belonging to Shanghai Push, an affiliate of the EMI record label.

Around 20 per cent of Baidu's traffic is based on searches for MP3 files. The legal wrangle increases focus on the debate concerning the liability of search services in cases of illegal downloading.