The Software and Information Industry Association has battled long and hard to stamp the trafficking of counterfeit and stolen software applications on the streets and online, a illicit business that costs legitimate vendors billions of dollars each year.
Now, as eSecurity Planet discovered, the trade association has set its sights on Europe, filing three separate lawsuits in England and Germany accusing pirates of selling stolen or knock-off versions of Adobe Systems’ applications on eBay.
eBay has long been targeted by law enforcement and the SIIA for passively allowing its online auction site to become a black market backwater for shady buyers and sellers alike. By ratcheting up the pressure on sellers based in Europe, the organization is hoping to at least slow the flow of what amounts to stolen intellectual property before it gets any worse.
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.
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.
The 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.
“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. Intellectual Property Policy & Enforcement for SIIA. “With monitoring and enforcement under way in Europe, SIIA is now working to stop software pirates who swindle consumers and companies around the globe.”
