Microsoft sues more retailers on piracy charges

World’s biggest software company and the maker of Windows Operating System and MS Office suite are continuing their battle against the piracy, which is said to be causing billions of dollars worth of revenue losses to the company. The company claims that based on the information provided by anti-piracy hotline and “secret shoppers”, they have filed eight lawsuits against companies.

The company has filed these cases at Arizona, California, Illinois, Minnesota and New York and the charges are that these retailers were selling counterfeit copies of software such as Office 2000 Professional and Windows XP. Some of these resellers were using fake or used Certificate of Authenticity labels to make these software appear original to their buyers.

These lawsuits are just the latest of a string of such cases against the sellers of computer hardware and software in the market to prevent consumer from being ripped off. These cases also hurt the company in the longer run, as it cuts on the sales of the original copies of their products. Microsoft runs an anti-piracy hotline (1-800-RU-LEGIT) in the states to get feedback from the users regarding such cases and also uses secret shoppers to find out about the reported sellers of fake applications in the market.