During his civil lawsuit against the People's Republic of China,Brian Milburn says he never once saw one of the country's lawyers.He read no court documents from China's attorneys because theyfiled none. The voluminous case record at the U.S. Districtcourthouse in Santa Ana contains a single communication from China:a curt letter to the U.S. State Department, urging that the suit bedismissed.

That doesn't mean Milburn's adversary had no contact withhim.

For three years, a group of hackers from China waged arelentless campaign of cyber harassment against Solid Oak SoftwareInc., Milburn's family-owned, eight-person firm in Santa Barbara,California. The attack began less than two weeks after Milburnpublicly accused China of appropriating his company's parentalfiltering software, CYBERsitter, for a national Internet censoringproject. And it ended shortly after he settled a $2.2 billionlawsuit against the Chinese government and a string of computercompanies last April.