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U.S. Navy Sued for $596 Million Over Software Piracy
Bitmanagement, the German developer of "BS Contact Geo," a geographic visualization application similar to Google Earth, is suing the U.S. Navy for copyright infringement [torrentfreak.com]:
The case centers around "BS Contact Geo [bitmanagement.com]," a 3D virtual reality application developed by the German company Bitmanagement. The Navy was enthusiastic about the geographical modeling capabilities of the software and in 2011 and 2012 it agreed to license its use for 38 computers. "Those individual PC-based licenses authorized the Navy to install BS Contact Geo on a total of just 38 computers for the purposes of testing, trial runs, and integration into Navy systems," the software vendor states in the federal claims court complaint (pdf [torrentfreak.com]).
After testing the application for a while, both parties started negotiating the licensing of additional computers. However, before any deals were made, the software maker learned that the Navy had already installed it on over 100,000 computers. According to emails Bitmanagement executives received in 2013, the software had been rolled onto at least 558,466 computers on the Navy's network, without their permission.
"Even as it negotiated with Bitmanagement over the proposed large-scale licensing of its product, the Navy was simultaneously copying and installing that software, without Bitmanagement's advance knowledge or authorization, on a massive scale," the complaint reads. In addition, the Navy allegedly disabled the software that is supposed to track on how many computers the software is being used. This violation of the terms of service prevents the software vendor from stopping the unauthorized copying.
The software licenses were sold for €800 a copy at the time ($1067.76 at the time, according to the complaint). They multiplied that by the 558,466 computers on which the software was installed to seek damages of over $596.3 million. Also at The Register [theregister.co.uk]. Alt PDF link [regmedia.co.uk].
