Software giant Microsoft announced on Tuesday that it has filed a lawsuit against nine resellers in China, accusing them of installing pirated copies of Windows in branded computers produced by Lenovo, Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Acer before selling them to customers, reports the Dongfang Daily, a Shanghai-based newspaper.
The nine resellers named are located in seven different Chinese cities, the company said at a press conference in Beijing. The accused include Beijing Tianqing Dongfang Trade, Shenzhen Aige Information Technology and Guangzhou ShengYingDa Electronic Technology, and other companies in the cities of Jinan, Nanjing, Chongqing and Chengdu. The company did not reveal the court it filed complaints to or the compensation it is seeking.
Beijing in 2006 ordered that all computers made in the country must be installed with official operating systems before being sold to end users. Computer manufactures buy software from Microsoft every year, though some resellers install pirated copies, unbeknownst to consumers.
Microsoft has in recent years been making significant efforts to stamp out piracy of its software, by far the largest portion of its revenue. Hong Lei, founder of the downloadable "Tomato Garden Windows XP" software, was jailed for three and a half years in 2009, which was seen a big victory for Microsoft.
As it began the new piracy lawsuit in China, Microsoft also announced that the next version of its operating system, Windows 8, will be launched by the end of October.
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