Microsoft settles £12m software piracy case

Posted on 17 May 2006 at 15:48

Microsoft has settled a £12m UK piracy case with a trader for 'substantial sums' and the promise to stop selling hooky Microsoft goods.

The case is part of Microsoft's Keep IT Real campaign, to reduce the Windows piracy rate from 16.7 per cent to 11.7 per cent.

The investigation goes back to early 2003, when William Ling, proprietor of Oyster Computers, was arrested after police, acting on an anonymous tip off, discovered the paper trail of a £3.5m business trading in counterfeit and unlicensed software. Records indicated that only 43 of the 1,296 sales of Microsoft products were of sufficient value for Ling to have paid Microsoft its royalties.

Mr Ling, who operated out of New Malden, Kingston-upon-Thames, was later charged with numerous offences under the Trade Marks Act 1994, ordered to pay £10,000 and to stop his illegal practice.

Just months later, however, Ling was back in the same business. This time Microsoft showed up with a £12m court action to recover what it considered damages from lost royalties.

Michala Alexander, head of Microsoft's anti-piracy programme in the UK, told us Microsoft chose not to tough it out in court with Mr Ling for reasons of expediency. 'Our main concern is to protect customers and channel partners from illegal traders, settling out of court enables us to achieve this in a rather more rapid amount of time,' she said.

She said that Microsoft will monitor Mr Ling closely to ensure he abides by the terms of the settlement.

Alexander told us that despite Mr Ling's casual defiance of terms of his first court case, which wasn't brought by Microsoft, the company continues to work closely with the UK authorities on the problems of piracy.

'We will work with the government agencies whenever possible to eradicate software piracy. We worked very closely with them to pursue this case and it was only after he reoffended that we chose to take our own civil action... Since the launch of Keep IT Real earlier this year we have worked very closely with Trading Standards on a number of occasions.'

Paul Ramsden, deputy CEO at the Trading Standards Institute, said: 'This case represents a small but vital step in tackling software piracy. Illegal traders of this nature adversely affect the customers that they dupe into purchasing unlawful software. Similarly, the revenues of genuine technology vendors suffer at the hands of those involved in the illegal software trade. We commend action being taken against software pirates since it will prevent the funding of more serious crime.'

Alexander said that Mr Ling was not being made an example of and that Microsoft 'takes every lead seriously'. 'This is one of many that we are working on,' she said, and added that details of further prosecutions will be announced next week.

For more information on Microsoft's antipiracy campaign visit www.howtotell.com/uk.

Author: Matt Whipp