Microsoft has found two Auckland-based sellers onselling pirated Microsoft products such as Office and Windows Vista, and have launched an international investigation against those accused.
Respective American and Australian auction sites iOffer, OZtion and New Zealand’s biggest and most popular auction website TradeMe are involved in both of the cases where bidders thought they were buying genuine software, only to find it did not work as expected.
One such buyer was Tina Tweedie who bought her software from dlive Limited, run by Xu Lei and Liao Yaopei. She said that she assumed it was genuine, “But when I loaded the software I realised that I had been duped into buying counterfeit.”
Microsoft described the dlive counterfeit software as “high-quality” and the Australasian-centred investigation took from July 2007 until October 2008.
Jun Li, Gong Qi and Jingtao Jin were part of an international investigation that took up to nine months to complete for selling Microsoft products illegally. It is alleged the software is sourced from China.
iOffer and TradeMe received numerous complaints against the sellers, and informed Microsoft. Microsoft reviewed 27 pieces of software and found them all to be of a high standard worth $22,000; a drop in the bucket for the $48 billion pirates cost Microsoft each year.
Mr Li, Mr Qi and Mr Jin were also found to have been supplying fake discs to numerous countries like The Netherlands, Canada and The United Kingdom.
All traders are being taken to court by Microsoft. Mr Li already faces a NZ$100,000 fine and is required to pay all legal costs. Other traders have had their bank accounts frozen while their trial awaits.
Microsoft does have some final words of advice, “Consumers should exercise great care in purchasing software from Internet auction sites, as some online traders are disreputable and there is usually no opportunity to inspect the product prior to purchase,” Vanessa Hutley, senior corporate attorney and director, Intellectual Property at Microsoft Australia said.
2 users commented in " Microsoft gets heavy on pirates "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackWell Oztion were alerted over and over and over again to these products being sold by honest Sellers on their Venue, and constantly refuse to act – they say they can’t act.
Fair Trading when contacted, said OZTION must take all means to act if they believe or have complaints that the items selling are fakes – they just ignore their Sellers who are trying to keep the site honest and above board – SHAME ON OZTION MANAGEMENT YOU WERE TOLD OVER AND OVER – so if you take the a cut in commission from these goods would that legally and technically make you an accomplice with prior knowledge up your sleeve????????
We, as others have also, have notified OZtion administration about these and other fakes across the OZtion website over the past 2 years, OZtions response has always been that we would need to search for and contact the registered rights owners of the items in question ourselves, even where the items in question listed on OZtion can be seen to be extremely obvious fakes, OZtion refused to act.
OZtion have a legal obligation to remove obvious fraudulent and infringing auction listings without need for third party contact, they also have the legal right to remove any auction listing of their chosing yet they refuse to excercise that right in cases of clear fraud.
It is high time that OZtion administration change their strategy regarding clear and obvious fakes on their website, so that fraudulent listings are taken down without delay and without the need for users themselves to search out and contact Registered Rights Owners (if possible) on OZtions behalf for listings showing clear and obvious signs that they are fakes, as there are instances where it is very clearly obvious from a sellers writeup that the item is fraudulent, these should nolonger be ignored and should be acted upon under the law.
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