The Financial Times yesterday reported that Baidu.com (BIDU: sentiment, chart, options) will be bombarded with legal challenges in the near future. More specifically, the news agency said that a group of attorneys are organizing a mass complaint against the business practices of China's largest search engine.

The complaint first filed by Li Changqing under China's new antimonopoly law in October reportedly has more than 50 companies willing to sue BIDU, but won't be officially filed until the number of plaintiffs reaches 100. According to the Times, the litigation concerns could put pressure on the Chinese government to decide whether to continue hailing Baidu.com as "a national champion" against its foreign rivals.

In early afternoon trading, the shares of BIDU have taken a 20-point hit, falling roughly 15% to dawdle near the 115.40 level. The security remains pressured beneath double-barreled resistance from its 10-day and 40-day moving averages a duo of trendlines BIDU hasn't closed a session above since mid-August.

However, despite the security's year-to-date loss of more than 65%, options traders remain optimistic toward the search sultan. The stock's Schaeffer's put/call open interest ratio (SOIR) currently stands at 0.58, indicating that calls outnumber their put rivals among near-term options. What's more, this reading is only 2 percentage points from an annual optimistic peak, implying that short-term options speculators have been more bullishly aligned toward BIDU only 2% of the time during the past year. An unwinding of this optimism could further exacerbate the equity's recent journey into the red.