Five months after expanded its policing of counterfeit software applications to Europe, the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA) has filed a trio of lawsuits in Germany and the UK accusing online sellers of hawking stolen or knock-off versions of Adobe Systems’ applications on eBay.
SIIA, a trade association representing roughly 500 software and digital content companies, has been on a mission to eliminate or at least reduce the rampant sale of stolen or counterfeit software on popular e-commerce sites — most notably eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY).
“These lawsuits represent a new front in our war on software piracy,” Keith Kupferschmid, SIIA’s senior vice president of intellectual property policy and enforcement, said in a statement. “With monitoring and enforcement under way in Europe, SIIA is now working to stop software pirates who swindle consumers and companies around the globe.”
On behalf of Adobe (NASDAQ: ADBE), SIIA has investigated and filed three lawsuits against online merchants who allegedly sold counterfeit or unauthorized copies of Adobe software on eBay. Because the cases are ongoing, names and seller IDs cannot be revealed at this time, officials said.
In January, SIIA began monitoring and investigating likely or known pirates operating in Europe. SIIA officials said its investigators were able to generate leads and use local investigators to buy products from suspected software pirates in order to confirm if the products were counterfeit. If sellers bought counterfeit software elsewhere, SIIA also launched an investigation to identify the original suppliers.
In the past three years, SIIA has filed more than 100 lawsuits against alleged pirates using eBay as the marketplace for counterfeit applications, a shadow industry that generated more than $53 billion in revenue in 2009 alone, according to IDC.
“If the price of software seems too low, it is probably counterfeit or otherwise illegal,” Kupferschmid added. “In these new cases, the sellers did not necessarily create the counterfeit software they sold — some purchased it cheaply from an illegitimate source and sold it again for a profit.”
Larry Barrett is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of Internet.com, the network for technology professionals.
RELATED NEWS AND ANALYSIS
- Huawei’s AI Update: Things Are Moving Faster Than We Think
FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
December 04, 2020 - Keeping Machine Learning Algorithms Honest in the ‘Ethics-First’ Era
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Guest Author,
November 18, 2020 - Key Trends in Chatbots and RPA
FEATURE | By Guest Author,
November 10, 2020 - Top 10 AIOps Companies
FEATURE | By Samuel Greengard,
November 05, 2020 - What is Text Analysis?
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Guest Author,
November 02, 2020 - How Intel’s Work With Autonomous Cars Could Redefine General Purpose AI
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Rob Enderle,
October 29, 2020 - Dell Technologies World: Weaving Together Human And Machine Interaction For AI And Robotics
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Rob Enderle,
October 23, 2020 - The Super Moderator, or How IBM Project Debater Could Save Social Media
FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
October 16, 2020 - Top 10 Chatbot Platforms
FEATURE | By Cynthia Harvey,
October 07, 2020 - Finding a Career Path in AI
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Guest Author,
October 05, 2020 - CIOs Discuss the Promise of AI and Data Science
FEATURE | By Guest Author,
September 25, 2020 - Microsoft Is Building An AI Product That Could Predict The Future
FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
September 25, 2020 - Top 10 Machine Learning Companies 2020
FEATURE | By Cynthia Harvey,
September 22, 2020 - NVIDIA and ARM: Massively Changing The AI Landscape
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Rob Enderle,
September 18, 2020 - Continuous Intelligence: Expert Discussion [Video and Podcast]
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By James Maguire,
September 14, 2020 - Artificial Intelligence: Governance and Ethics [Video]
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By James Maguire,
September 13, 2020 - IBM Watson At The US Open: Showcasing The Power Of A Mature Enterprise-Class AI
FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
September 11, 2020 - Artificial Intelligence: Perception vs. Reality
FEATURE | By James Maguire,
September 09, 2020 - Anticipating The Coming Wave Of AI Enhanced PCs
FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
September 05, 2020 - The Critical Nature Of IBM’s NLP (Natural Language Processing) Effort
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Rob Enderle,
August 14, 2020