HC: 2 Lakhs to MS
By Amlan Mohanty

Microsoft (MS) India has been aggressive about its anti-piracy stance since the very beginning, and through a recent order of the Delhi High Court, it has succeeded in its claim for punitive damages to the tune of Rs. 2,00,000.

Punitive damages were awarded to Microsoft in this case since it was able to prove that a local vendor, based out of Vishkhapatanam, was engaged in the business of selling assembled PC’s to customers, after pre-installing unauthorised copies of Microsoft Windows XP Professional 2002 and Microsoft Office 2000. Microsoft engaged two of its own independent investigators to purchase systems from the vendor and then handed it over to a technical expert (also appointed by Microsoft) who concluded that they were unauthorised copies, after ‘taking screenshots of the directory of the hard disk’. It is not clear how this opinion was arrived at and what the evidence submitted to the court was.

Interestingly,  a chartered accountant, hired by Microsoft to assess the damages caused to the company by the vendor’s use of unauthorised software, quantified the damages to be Rs.30,06,000. However, the court only granted damages of Rs. 2,00,000 plus the costs associated with filing the suit itself.