Court Acts On Microsoft Plea On Software Piracy

The Delhi High Court, on a plea by Microsoft Corporation, has restrained the sale of branded computers with pirated software by a Mumbai computer vendor.

Justice Manmohan Singh, granting permanent injunction last month on the suit, ordered the vendor selling branded computers loaded with pirated operating system and other application software from Microsoft, to pay a penalty of Rs.2 lakh as damages.

The court's order came on a petition filed by the company seeking its direction to restrain a vendor, @Gizahertz, in Mumbai from selling computers loaded with unlicensed versions of software such as Windows 7, Windows Vista and MS Office.

Microsoft had claimed infringement of its copyrights and other intellectual property rights by the vendor who was selling branded computers with the company's software without taking authorisation.

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Microsoft said in the petition that in July 2010, "it came to know that the defendant (the vendor) was infringing plaintiffs' (company's) copyrights and other intellectual property rights by loading the hard disk of the plaintiffs' software programmes on to branded computers which are sold by them to their customers, without taking any authorisation from the plaintiffs to do so."