Microsoft files 20 more antipiracy lawsuits

IDG News Service - Continuing its worldwide assault on software piracy, Microsoft Corp. has filed 20 lawsuits against resellers accused of distributing unauthorized copies of its software.

The lawsuits, filed against 20 resellers in nine states across the U.S., accuse the companies of either distributing counterfeit software on CDs or installing it on PCs that are then sold to consumers and businesses, a practice known as hard disk loading, Microsoft said Tuesday.

Microsoft also announced the results of its first large-scale forensic analysis of counterfeit versions of Windows acquired in 17 countries. The company found that 34% of the 348 counterfeit copies analyzed could not be installed on computers, and that 43% contained additional programs that aren't part of Windows.

According to Mary Jo Schrade, a Microsoft senior attorney, some of the code on the disks that was not part of Windows posed problems such as installing malware in addition to installing Windows without the user’s knowledge; installing tampered or incomplete versions of Windows, rendering the OS unstable; and bypassing input of the administrator password.

To obtain the copies of software used in the study, Microsoft uses investigators to buy software from vendors they suspect are selling counterfeit versions of Windows. The software used in the study was purchased in the U.S. as well as other countries in North America, South America and Asia.

Schrade acknowledged that Microsoft's interest in identifying people who sell counterfeit Windows software and stopping them is not purely altruistic, since the company stands to gain financially from sales of genuine copies of Windows. "We put the research and development money behind the products and if someone copies and sells them, we're not getting paid for our research and development, thoughts and ideas," she said.

However, Microsoft also is concerned about protecting consumers from any harm that purchasing nonlicensed and counterfeit versions of Windows could bring them, either through vulnerabilities or from spending money on software that does not work, she said.

The legal actions and the forensic analysis are part of Microsoft's broader Genuine Software Initiative, a program to protect the company's intellectual property. Over the next nine months Microsoft plans to double its investment in efforts to detect and prevent sales of counterfeit software, Schrade said. The company plans to file at least 150 cases against alleged counterfeiters by the end of the company's fiscal year in June.

Schrade declined to disclose how much money Microsoft has put into locating people who are selling counterfeit versions of Windows, saying only it is in the millions of dollars so far.

In 2005, Microsoft introduced Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) as part of this initiative. WGA automatically checks that customers using Windows Update, Microsoft Update for Windows and the Microsoft Download Center have a legitimate version of Windows before they can download updates from those services.

IDG News Service's Elizabeth Montalbano contributed to this report.