Grant Gross
Senior Writer

BSA collects record $3.5 million from media firm for copyright infringement

news
Sep 18, 20072 mins

Unnamed company says 'having software management processes and tools in place could have avoided' situation of unlicensed software use

The Business Software Alliance has collected a record settlement of nearly $3.5 million from an international media firm that was using unlicensed software, the trade group announced Tuesday.

The settlement between BSA and the company, which BSA declined to name for legal reasons, followed a criminal complaint the trade group made on behalf of members Microsoft, Adobe Systems, Avid Technology, and Autodesk. The BSA complaint led to police raids on the company’s premises last year, the trade group said.

BSA did its own investigation of the company’s software licenses and alleged copyright infringement. The settlement with the company requires it to delete all unlicensed software products and purchase the licenses for the software it plans to use.

The large penalties were the result of an extended period of unlicensed software use, BSA said.

“This situation came about because we relied on a single individual to keep us compliant and manage our software assets across multiple-locations during a period of significant expansion,” an unnamed source at the company said in a BSA news release. “The management were shocked at the scale of the situation and recognize that by having software management processes and tools in place this could have been avoided.”

Software from BSA members was “core to this company’s business and yet it failed to manage this vital business asset,” Robert Holleyman, BSA’s president and CEO, said in a statement. “Sadly it is the BSA’s experience that companies undergoing periods of rapid growth, as in this case, can overlook software licensing issues.”

The settlement cost the company significantly more than if it had managed licensed software, Holleyman added.

Grant Gross

Grant Gross, a senior writer at CIO, is a long-time IT journalist who has focused on AI, enterprise technology, and tech policy. He previously served as Washington, D.C., correspondent and later senior editor at IDG News Service. Earlier in his career, he was managing editor at Linux.com and news editor at tech careers site Techies.com. As a tech policy expert, he has appeared on C-SPAN and the giant NTN24 Spanish-language cable news network. In the distant past, he worked as a reporter and editor at newspapers in Minnesota and the Dakotas. A finalist for Best Range of Work by a Single Author for both the Eddie Awards and the Neal Awards, Grant was recently recognized with an ASBPE Regional Silver award for his article “Agentic AI: Decisive, operational AI arrives in business.”

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