Three Enterprises Punished for Using Pirated Software

On July 16, the Xiamen Intermediate People's Court made the first instance judgments on three infringement cases concerning the use of pirated software. The court ruled that the three defendants should bear the liability for infringement and make compensation.

All the three defendants were enterprises engaged in stone processing in Quanzhou of Fujian Province. They bought the pirated software from Wu Jian who worked as a computer aided designer in a stone design company. In 2003, Wu Jian illegally reproduced a set of software for stone design which was owned by Japanese CREA Corporation. From 2004 to 2005, Wu Jian made an illegal income of 240,000 RMB yuan by selling the pirated software. In early 2007, the Xiamen Intermediate People's Court sentenced Wu Jian to a 30-month imprisonment and confiscated his illegal gains of 240,000 RMB yuan.

After Wu Jian was sentenced to imprisonment, Xiamen Crea-China Co. Ltd., the only distributor of the stone design software authorized by Japanese CREA, instituted a civil action against Wu Jian. Both parties reached an agreement for amicable settlement that Wu Jian should compensate 180,000 RMB yuan to Crea-China.

The Crea-China instituted civil proceedings against the three enterprises which bought and used the pirated software. The plaintiff held that the defendants had brought damage to Crea-China's property and reputation by installing the pirated software for business purpose.

According to the court, the three defendants bought the business software at a low price and did not check the ownership of the copyright. Since they used the pirated software for business, they should bear the liability for infringement. Therefore, the court ordered each defendant to compensate 20,000 RMB yuan for the plaintiff's loss.