Eight days after its official launch, 1Pai.com.cn, jointly established by Yahoo! and Sina Corp, was accused yesterday by Taobao.com, a domestic online auction company, of stealing information from its database.

Yahoo China said it wasn't clear on the issue and would let its joint venture fight back alone.

Taobao.com said in an announcement that, starting from April 9, many of its users found Website access slower than before. In the following days, a lot of pages could not be opened.

The company then found out that a computer or several computers from a fixed IP address were excessively visiting the Website and using a spyware program to steal its merchandise and customer data online. The IP address' domain name, w5.personals.cnb.yahoo.com, turned out to belong to Yahoo China, Taobao said in the announcement.

Taobao.com, the customer-to-customer e-commerce Website, said it has sent a lawyer's letter to Yahoo Holdings (Hong Kong) Ltd Beijing office this Monday but has not received reply yet, said spokesman Jin Jianhang.

Yahoo and Sina established the joint venture Beijing Sina-Yahoo Online Information Technology on April 13 to launch www.1Pai.com.cn, another C-to-C portal. The Website provides a trading platform and transaction services for individuals and businesses, a similar business model to Eachnet.com and Taobao.com.

Taobao has around 600,000 registered users to date while Eachnet has 4.4 million users.

1Pai's launch last week was two months earlier than Yahoo's original plan in June, as the company wanted to time this event with the company founder Jerry Young's visit to Beijing.

Zhang Xing, a spokeswoman with the joint venture, said the company has no comment available at this moment.

Source: Shanghai Daily news