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16 November 2016Copyright

US Navy fires back at piracy claim

The US Navy has fired back at a copyright infringement claim brought by Bitmanagement Software, a developer of software.

Bitmanagement had accused the Navy of pirating more than 558,000 copies of 3D virtual reality software in a lawsuit filed back in July at the US Court of Federal Claims.

According to the suit, the Navy had copied and installed the software, BS Contact GEO, on computers for which it didn’t have a licence.

The software developer alleged that in 2011 and 2012 it had agreed to license its software to the Navy on a “limited and experimental basis”, authorising instalment on just 38 computers for the purposes of “testing, trial runs and integration”.

In October 2013, Bitmanagement’s executives were “surprised” to discover that despite ongoing licensing negotiations the Navy had installed the software onto around 105,000 computers, according to the suit.

Bitmanagement sought nearly $600 million (the market value of unpaid licences).

On Monday, November 14, the Navy responded to the claim, confirming that it purchased 38 licences for the software in 2012 and that it had installed the software on thousands of computers.

It denied that the licences were “limited” and that the installation “occurred without Bitmanagement’s advance knowledge or consent”.

“Defendant admits that the Navy has never directly compensated Bitmanagement for the Navy’s installation of BS Contact Geo, but defendant denies that Bitmanagement is entitled to any compensation for the Navy’s installation of the software,” said the response.

The Navy also denied that the installations should have been surprising to Bitmanagement’s executives and claimed that “Bitmanagement modified BS Contact Geo for the purpose of allowing the deployment”.

Carl Nichols, partner at WilmerHale and representative of Bitmanagement, said: “The government admits they copied Bitmanagement’s software onto hundreds of thousands of computers, but nevertheless denies it owes Bitmanagement any compensation for doing so."

He added that Bitmanagement will continue to pursue its claims for compensation for the "government’s unauthorised copying and use of its software".

The US Department of Justice declined to comment beyond the lawsuit.

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