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'Today's announcement marks ... the first time the company has focussed its efforts worldwide to bring legal action against online dealers,' the U.S.-based software company said in a statement.

The legal actions include 15 in the United States, 10 in Germany, 10 in the Netherlands, five in France and five in Britain, as well as proceedings in Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Korea, Mexico and Poland.

The cases are against sellers who the company says have misused

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their eBay or other online auction site accounts to sell counterfeit software. Microsoft said it had sent warnings for infringing behaviour to many of the defendants before taking the legal action.

'Counterfeit software is defective and dangerous because counterfeiters tamper with the genuine software code, which leaves the door open to identity theft and other serious security breaches,' Matt Lundy, a senior attorney at Microsoft, said in a statement.

Microsoft analysed counterfeit Windows XP programmes in June this year and said it found that 34 per cent of the disks could not be installed on a computer, and another 43 per cent contained additional programs, or binary code, that are not part of the operating system.

A survey from independent market research group IDC, sponsored by Microsoft, found that 25 per cent of Web sites offering counterfeit product keys, pirated software, key generators or crack tools, attempted to install either malicious software or potentially unwanted software.