November 25, 2022
In what appears to be one of the most ironic cases ever, the American Navy was charged with piracy and copyright infringement by Bitmanagement Software GmbH for making hundreds of thousands of copies of 3D modeling software without purchasing licenses.
GmbH claimed to have distributed 38 copies of their 3D virtual reality software, BS Contact Geo, but the Navy installed the software on at least 558,466 machines between 2013 and 2015 while they were still negotiating for additional licenses.
The Court of Federal Claims has now awarded Bitmanagement Software GmbH $154,400 for the Navy’s copyright infringement, as opposed to the $596.3 million originally sought by the company.
In the court filing, GmbH claimed, “Without Bitmanagement’s advance knowledge or consent, the Navy installed BS Contact Go onto hundreds of thousands of computers. Bitmanagement did not license or otherwise authorize these uses of its software, and the Navy has never compensated Bitmanagement for these uses of Bitmanagement’s software.”
According to the court documents, after GmbH filed the lawsuit in July 2016, the Navy uninstalled the BS Contact Geo software from all of its computers and then reinstalled it on 34 seats for inventory purposes.
The sources for this piece include an article in Gizmodo.
