PC Club ordered to pay $1.3 million to Microsoft

The Federal Court has ordered PC Club Australia, its officeholders Mymy Lee and Kane Fang and business manager David Lee, to pay Microsoft $1.3 million in damages and costs for copyright, trade mark infringement and breaches of the Trade Practices Act.

The software giant took legal action against the company following a raid on its Rhodes, Sydney premises which found the company was selling a high volume of pirated and illegal software as well as counterfeit Certificates of Authenticity (COA) labels.

PC Club argued it believed it was legitimate for system builders to licence copies of Microsoft software by simply distributing the copied software with a loose COA, Microsoft said in a statement. The court rejected this argument.

Vanessa Hutley, senior corporate attorney for Microsoft Australia, said in a statement that the ruling against PC Club would send a clear signal to software pirates that Microsoft and its legitimate business partners would not tolerate such activities.

“In Australia, there are many small and medium businesses that legitimately make a living by selling genuine software. When software pirates try to get around the system, they not only disadvantage the consumer, bit also genuine Australian small businesses,” Hutley said.

The case began in September 2004 and concluded with a judgement on 28 October 2005.