SIIA, (The Software & Information Industry Association) have just won their first European anti-piracy case with a five figure settlement sum.
A German seller was alleged to have breached German copyright and trademark law by purchasing several hundred authentic Adobe products, importing them to Germany without Adobe’s consent and selling them on eBay. This is known as parallel importing – or the importation of products to be sold in another market without permission from the trademark owner.
There are two similar cases outstanding in Germany and another in the UK which were filed last year after SIIA expanded their operations internationally last January.
The thing that’s interesting in this case is that is no question about the authenticity of the software, it was simply destined for a market outside the EU and the only crime was to purchase and resell in a different territory.
“SIIA’s goal is to stop the sale of illegal software and teach all sellers to make certain they are dealing only in legal software,” said Keith Kupferschmid, Senior Vice President of Intellectual Property Policy &
Enforcement for SIIA. “As this settlement demonstrates, it is both a crime to create counterfeit software and a crime to sell authentic software without authorization”.
6 Responses
Im interested weather this is because its from outside the EU, EU law lets you do it, although try telling that to microsoft vero. I dont even bother listing some of their stuff anymore lol
It’s my guess that within the next 10 years, the way software is sold will be very different.
They’ll be no piracy as we know it today, much like the way of music downloads/napster etc has gone.
And Adobe software is so damn overpriced anyway, I don’t blame anyone that does this.
It’s a little like that recent case with the landlord showing football matches in her pub with a Greek decoder. The european judge gave her their backing because of freedom of movement of goods within the EU.