Russian court throw away criminal case against a school principal by Microsoft

A Russian court has threw out a criminal case against a school principal who was accused of piracy by the software giant Microsoft.

The judge called the prosecution’s case “trivial”. The case was filed against Alexander Ponosov and the prosecutors now have 10 days to appeal the ruling.

Ponosov said in a statement on this ruling: “We’re off to drink champagne now. Of course, it was trivial.”

Microsoft itself is yet to issue a statement on this disappointing ruling by the courts.

Local experts had said that this case was being used as a misguided attempt by authorities to crackdown on piracy in Russia. President Vladimir Putin himself had called this lawsuit “utter nonsense”. He had added that people making and selling pirated media should be sued instead.

Ponosov had said that his school had received 12 new computers which were loaded with bootleg versions of Windows operating system and Microsoft Office already installed. They had not installed the applications themselves.