Six Hollywood film studios have won a rare judgment in China against a DVD company in Beijing selling pirated movies.

A Beijing court has awarded Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. and five other studios the equivalent of $25,500 US from the Beijing video shop. 

The decision, despite the small amount, marks another major victory for the Hollywood industry which claims that it loses about $2.7 billion US annually to Chinese movie piracy.

Judgments against video pirates are still rare in China. The Motion Picture Association (MPA), an umbrella group of American studios, won its first piracy case in China only last year.

Pirated films being offered by the Beijing Yongshen Century International Cultural Development Co. included the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy and The Day After Tomorrow.

"The rulings against one of the Beijing's most notorious pirate retail outlets demonstrate that Chinese courts continue to be supportive of copyright holders' efforts to vigourously defend their property," said Frank Rittman in a statement. Rittman is the Asia Pacific representative of the MPA.

However, Rittman criticized the court for the paltry fine, which he said was "little more than a slap on the wrist." The MPA has filed 17 complaints in the past two years about Beijing Yongsheng Century.

In those years, police have seized more than 16,000 pirated discs but criminal charges were never filed until now.

With files from the Associated Press