Piracy Pays (The IP Owner) – Judge Whyte Grants Motion For Default Judgment After Awarding Sanctions In Unauthorized Software Distribution Case

Everyone in the software field (and probably every computer user) is familiar with Adobe and at least one of its products, including Acrobat and Photoshop. Popular software vendors like Adobe are often the victims of piracy and the unauthorized distribution of their products. As such, many have adopted policing measures like employing investigators to purchase products from third-party distributors to verify authenticity and proper licensing.

Adobe recently had success using such a measure in Adobe Systems, Inc. v. Software Tech, a case against several related distributors of Adobe software: La Boutique Du Softwaretech, Inc., Futur-Soft Inc., and Pierre Francis (an individual). Adobe sued them for copyright infringement, trademark infringement, and trademark dilution based on having resold serial numbers used to activate Adobe software they provided in downloads or on disks, thereby essentially selling the same product multiple times without authorization.