Talking at the annual Midem music conference, in Cannes today, Mikael Hed, the chief executive of Rovio, said: “Piracy may not be a bad thing: it can get us more business at the end of the day.”

He admitted that the games company, which is based in Finland and experienced huge success with the Angry Birds brand, learned from the music industry’s mistakes when thinking about how to deal with piracy.

“We have some issues with piracy, not only in apps, but also especially in the consumer products. There is tons and tons of merchandise out there, especially in Asia, which is not officially licensed products,” he explained.

“We could learn a lot from the music industry, and the rather terrible ways the music industry has tried to combat piracy.”

Two weeks ago Wikipedia and several other sites, closed down their service for 24 hours out of protest against two anti-piracy acts which were being proposed in the US, claiming it would stifle the open web. The new acts would have given new powers for rightsholders to shut down sites with pirated content and pursue the offenders in court.

Veteran activist Zhu Yufu faced trial in the prosperous eastern city of Hangzhou, where police arrested him in April and charged him with “inciting subversion of state power”, his lawyer, Li Dunyong, said.

The court did not deliver its verdict straight away. But Zhu, 60, appears likely to follow other Chinese dissidents who have received stiff prison terms from the party-run judiciary on subversion charges, which are often used to punish ardent advocates of democratic change.

In Zhu’s case, the prosecutors cited his poem, “It’s time”, as well as text messages that he sent using the Skype online chat service, said Li.

There was no suggestion that Skype helped police to collect evidence, he told Reuters by telephone.

“They took his computer away from his home and went through it,” he said of the Hangzhou police.

“His internet contacts and password were saved on it, with automatic access, and when the police accessed it they could open the records of text messages saved on Skype. He had not erased the records.”

The European Commission said it had opened anti-trust proceedings against the Korean giant “in order to guarantee undistorted competition”.

The case surrounds Samsung’s obligations under Frand (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory) patent licensing terms.

Frand terms allow smartphone manufacturers to use standard technology, such as the signalling systems that connect mobile devices to networks. They guarantee that the company that holds a patent cannot discriminate against others that want to use the same technology, and cannot charge excessive licensing fees.

The investigation into whether “Samsung has failed to honour its irrevocable commitment” to Frand terms, given in 1998, was prompted by a barrage patent infringement cases from the firm. It is suing Apple over at least 13 patents related to 3G.

“The opening of proceedings means that the Commission will examine the case as a matter of priority,” the European Commission said.

The investigation marks a major regulatory intervention in Samsung’s bitter patent dispute with Apple, which is ongoing in courts in the United States, Germany and Australia, among other jurisdictions. The European Commission sent the two firms requests for information in November.