U.S. IT firm charged with using unauthorised software >From Indo-Asian News Service
New Delhi, Sep 8 (IANS) Astell Infotech Limited, the Indian arm of a New Jersey-based IT services firm, has been charged with using unauthorised software, Delhi Police said Monday. The economic offences wing of the Delhi Police conducted a raid at the office of Astell Infotech on September 3 after another software firm, Macromedia Inc., complained of unauthorised usage of its software. "We raided Astell's office located in Greater Kailash here. The company had been using 40 computers that were checked by the authorised representative of Macromedia," said a senior Delhi Police official. "It was found that the hard discs of 15 computers were loaded with software of Macromedia. Astell had no authorisation for using the software," the official told IANS, adding the estimated value of the recovered software was Rs.500,000. The official said a case under copyright laws has been registered against Astell Infotech. "The investigation is in progress. While top official of the country are not in India, we are trying to gather information from local employees." Astell Infotech officials refused to comment on the issue. The company has offices in New Jersey and New Delhi and provides services to large multinational clients in the U.S. "No company should place their hard fought business reputation at risk by using unlicensed software," said Shriram Krishnamachari, country manager (India) of Macromedia Inc. "Companies, which use illegal software for their own benefit, are robbing the software developers of their valuable intellectual property and placing the future viability of software industry at risk." Macromedia has operations in more than 50 countries worldwide, and headquarters in San Francisco. The company is a strategic IT supplier to customers in the business, government and education markets globally. India reduced it piracy rate by nine points between 1996 and 2002, creating new businesses, jobs and opportunities. Cutting the country's piracy rate by another 10 points, to 60 percent, by 2006, could create nearly 50,000 high-tech jobs, say industry observers. --Indo-Asian News Service _______________________________________________ ilugd mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd
