US Navy Under Fire In Mass Software Piracy Lawsuit (torrentfreak.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: In 2011 and 2012, the U.S. Navy began using BS Contact Geo, a 3D virtual reality application developed by German company Bitmanagement. The Navy reportedly agreed to purchase licenses for use on 38 computers, but things began to escalate. While Bitmanagement was hopeful that it could sell additional licenses to the Navy, the software vendor soon discovered the U.S. Government had already installed it on 100,000 computers without extra compensation. In a Federal Claims Court complaint filed by Bitmanagement two years ago, that figure later increased to hundreds of thousands of computers. Because of the alleged infringement, Bitmanagement demanded damages totaling hundreds of millions of dollars. In the months that followed both parties conducted discovery and a few days ago the software company filed a motion for partial summary judgment, asking the court to rule that the U.S. Government is liable for copyright infringement. According to the software company, it's clear that the U.S. Government crossed a line. In its defense, the U.S. Government had argued that it bought concurrent-use licenses, which permitted the software to be installed across the Navy network. However, Bitmanagement argues that it is impossible as the reseller that sold the software was only authorized to sell PC licenses. In addition, the software company points out that the word "concurrent" doesn't appear in the contracts, nor was there any mention of mass installations. The full motion brings up a wide range of other arguments as well which, according to Bitmanagement, make it clear that the U.S. Government is liable for copyright infringement.

Comments

Remember Harvard Graphics?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Army bankrupted this company due to rampant piracy of their software.

That's the origin of the US GOV'T RESTRICTED RIGTS in the (c) messages.

Re:phone-home software in the navy

[Anonymous Coward]

I assume that is how they know the navy had 100,000 installs of their software.

During the lawsuit the Navy stated they believed they had a license that would allow them to include this software in their standard PC deployment image and that the only restrictions were how many copies were running or in use at the same time.

During the court case, the Navy admitted it has deployed that particular standard system image hundreds of thousands of times since the software inclusion.

Re:phone-home software in the navy

[afidel]

Incorrect. They learned the scope of the problem through discovery and adjusted their claims to account for the much more massive copying (the original scope was just the single site where the trial happened). The DoD very much does not allow call home.