A Chinese court in the southern city of Shenzhen has sentenced 11 people that distributed more than $3 billion of counterfeit Microsoft software to jail terms of up to six-and-a-half years.
A Chinese court in the southern city of Shenzhen has sentenced 11 people that distributed more than $3 billion of counterfeit Microsoft software to jail terms of up to six-and-a-half years.
According to a statement posted by Microsoft, the illegal syndicate pirated versions of 19 of the company’s most popular products, which were produced in at least 11 languages. The software was sold across 36 countries.
The popular Chinese internet portal Sina.com described the sentences as the “stiffest ever meted out for intellectual property rights violations in China”.
David Finn, a Microsoft anti-piracy official, said in the statement: “Microsoft greatly appreciates the work of China’s PSB and the FBI in taking strong enforcement action against this global software counterfeiting syndicate.”
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