Engineering news
Engineering companies that are using unlicensed CAD software must get their houses in order or face legal action, an industry alliance has said.
The Business Software Alliance (BSA) made the assertion as it announced that an engineering design company had been forced to pay out more than £30,000 because it had used illegal and unlicensed Autodesk CAD software. West Sussex's Project Options was fined £16,000 and forced to purchase new software licenses worth approximately £17,500 as a result, the BSA said.
The BSA said it had received a confidential report about Project Options' use of Autodesk software from a whistleblower. A BSA study found that in 2011 the UK had a software piracy rate of 26%, meaning more than one in four software installations were unlicensed. The commercial value of this piracy was £1.2 billion.
Warren Weertman, senior counsel EMEA at the BSA, said that people were often unaware they were using unlicensed software but that some companies did so “very consciously”. “It is often seen as a cost-saving mechanism,” he added.
Paul Daly, director at Project Options, said: “Before the BSA investigation, we never prioritised software licensing in the business; however this is where our troubles started. In addition to discovering that we were using unlicensed software, we also discovered some contractors had downloaded and used unlicensed software. Being a company that is highly dependent on our own intellectual property to survive we realise that ultimately the buck stops with us and we’ve had to deal with the consequences.”
Companies needed to ensure they had relevant software asset management practices in place, the BSA said. It said it was determined to protect the identities of individuals who reported the use of pirated software via its website. “People are free to make a confidential report using our reporting page. That is where the majority of companies are made known to us,” Weertman said. Some software firms were also investigating companies that were known to be using unlicensed software, he added. Firms were then reported to the BSA.
“The message from the BSA to engineering firms is, if you think you are using unlicensed software, or you know you are using unlicensed software, it will cost you more to sort things out if you have the BSA or one of its members coming after you.
“Take action before it escalates into a legal issue.”