U.S. Navy Forced to Pay Software Company for Piracy
Story by Nikki Main • Yesterday 4:25 PM
The U.S. Navy was found guilty of piracy and is ordered to pay a software company $154,400 for a lawsuit filed back in 2016. The company, Bitmanagement Software GmbH, filed a complaint against the Navy, accusing the military branch of copyright infringement.
GmbH claimed they had issued 38 copies of their 3D virtual reality software, BS Contact Geo, but while they were still in negotiations for additional licenses, the Navy installed the software onto at least 558,466 machines between 2013 and 2015.
In the court filing, GmbH claimed, “Without Bitmanagement’s advance knowledge or consent, the Navy installed BS Contact Go onto hundreds of thousands of computers. Bitmanagement did not license or otherwise authorize these uses of its software, and the Navy has never compensated Bitmanagement for these uses of Bitmanagement’s software.”
The company sued the Navy for nearly $600 million for “willful copyright infringement” of the software which, according to the vendor’s website, is a 3D viewer that “enables you to visualize and interact with state of the art 2D/3D content,” and is based on digital data captured from “various sources (land surveys, CAD, satellite imagery, airborne laser scanning, etc).”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/u-s-navy-forced-to-pay-software-company-for-piracy/ar-AA14tCih?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=1544fbef3ae74d9398bcf468d63f3b5d
