U.S. Navy in hot water for (software) piracy
The US Court of Federal Claims has awarded German software company Bitmanagement Software GmbH $154,400, finding the navy to have infringed the company's copyright.
Bitmanagement had issued the Navy licenses for 38 copies of their 3D virtual reality software, however, the military branch had proceeded or planned to install the programme on around 558,400 other devices between 2013 and 2015.
The company's lawyers initially pressed for nearly $600m in damages, arguing that the license was worth more than $1000 per copy, but the court was persuaded by the Navy’s expert witness, a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) for Pricewaterhouse Coopers, who determined the per license cost at $200.
The request from the plaintiff's lawyers pales in comparison to one made by the RIAA (the trade organization that represents the music recording industry in the United States) in 2011. In a lawsuit with the makers of?LimeWire, the RIAA argued it was owed $75 trillion, a request the judge branded "absurd"... for context the GDP of the entire world in 2011 was just $74?trillion.
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