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Taiwan piracy group sentenced to 4 years in prison |
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Written by Felix Da Silva (fdasilva@bitnip.com)
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Monday, 04 February 2008 |
Between 1997 and 2003, Huang Jer-sheng, owner of the Taipei-based distributor
Maximus Technology, and his associates were behind 90 per cent of the world’s high quality counterfeit of Microsoft software and they will
spend the next four years in prison after the sentence handed down by a Taipei, Taiwan, court.
According to the Press Release, the investigation and prosecution by the Taiwanese
authorities, assisted by Microsoft Corp., Huang Jer-sheng was sentenced to four
years' imprisonment on Dec. 31, 2007, equaling the longest sentence handed down
for this type of crime in Taiwan's history. Huang Jer-sheng's three codefendants
were sentenced the same day to imprisonment terms ranging from 18 months to
three years.
David Finn, associate general counsel for Worldwide Anti-Piracy and
Anti-Counterfeiting at Microsoft said,
The prison sentences handed down in this case in Taiwan -- and the dozens of
other criminal cases brought by prosecutors around the world against others
associated with these Taiwan-based defendants -- provide another stark reminder
of the consequences of counterfeiting Microsoft products.
Microsoft applauds the work of the Taiwanese authorities in taking such strong
enforcement action against this syndicate. This case is another testament to the
strong partnership between local law enforcement authorities and private
companies, and shows the impact those partnerships can have in getting
counterfeit software off the market and bringing criminal counterfeiters to
justice. John Newton, manager of the Intellectual Property Crime project at INTERPOL
The criminals behind counterfeit syndicates are organized, resourceful and
willing to spend large amounts of money to develop and ship pirated goods to
markets all over the world. Piracy is a crime, pure and simple, and it is
imperative we coordinate our efforts across the globe to stop these criminal
syndicates and this illicit trade. The syndicate produced counterfeit versions of at least 21 Microsoft software
products in seven known languages, English, French, German, Italian, Polish,
Portuguese and simplified Chinese, worth an estimated $900 million (U.S.).
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