Microsoft was on the way to take Comet, the
second PC retailer in England to court due to the reason of “making and selling
more than 94,000 counterfeit Windows Vista and Windows XP recovery CDs”.
Microsoft
sues retailer Comet over 94,000 'counterfeit' recovery discs
The giant software said these restoration
CDs which Comet sold to the new PC owners violated its terms and made up for
the counterfeit making offence.
“As mentioned in the details of the case
submitted today (4.2.2012), Comet had produced and sold thousands of
counterfeit Windows CDs to our naïve customers in England”, David Finn,
Associate General Counsel of Worldwide Anti-Piracy and Anti-Counterfeiting at
Microsoft stated “Comet’s actions were unfair to all customers. We had expected
more from the retailers of Microsoft’s products; besides, our customers
deserved more than that”.
Comet argued that the recovery Windows
supply was for the customers’ benefits, especially after the event that
Microsoft stopped offering recovery dices to the customers.
“Comet had sought and received the legal
advice from the leading lawyers to support the view that recovery dices making
didn’t violate the intellectual property of Microsoft”, the company mentioned
in an official announcement. “Comet strongly believes that its actions brought
the biggest benefits to customers. It also believes that customers were totally
affected by the decision of no longer offering the recovery disk for each of
the computer with Microsoft-based operation system”.
At first, Comment’s point of view seemed to
be reasonable because customers liked to use the genuine disks. However, a part
of Microsoft’s case may be about the received money...
“During 2008 and 2009, Comet approached
tens of thousands customers who had bought PC with the necessary recovery
available on the hard drive, and suggested them to buy the not necessary disks
with the price of £14.99”, Microsoft said. “The recovery softwares were not only
supplied on the hard drives by the computer manufacturers but customers could
only take it free of charge from the PC producers or at the minimum cost if
they wished. The action of copying the illegal softwares and then selling them
was counterfeit”.
While Microsoft argument made sense and
could win the case, it is hard to see what the giant software could achieve
after these legal actions. According to Microsoft, Comet supplied the recovery
discs in 2008 and 2009 but stopped since then. The pursuing of this case at the
time of writing won’t make any changes but cost money from both companies.
Comet’s customers who might be worried
about their illegal recovery using were guaranteed that their softwares on the
computers were completely legal. Those who used Microsoft’s products can check
whether their softwares are genuine or not at www.howtotell.com.
