LITHUANIA IMPOSES HIGHEST FINE YET FOR USE OF

UNCLAS VILNIUS 000009 SIPDIS STATE PLEASE PASS TO USTR (DWEINER) SOFIA FOR DOJ (MLAMBERTI) E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: ECON ETRD KIPR LH SUBJECT: LITHUANIA IMPOSES HIGHEST FINE YET FOR USE OF PIRATED SOFTWARE REF: A. 2008 SECSTATE 43146 ¶B. 2008 VILNIUS 113 ¶1. The Klaipeda City Court imposed Lithuania's largest IPR-related fine ever for the use of unlicensed software on November 13. The Court found Alex Naval, a marine design and engineering company, guilty of using unlicensed software for commercial gain and fined it 300,000 Litas (about 124,000 USD). Unlicensed copies of Adobe Acrobat, Autodesk, Autocad, Autodesk Mechanical Desktop, Microsoft Office and Windows software were discovered in twelve Alex Naval desktop computers, according to a representative of the Business Software Alliance (BSA). Alex Naval appealed the decision on December 2nd with a willingness to proceed to the Lithuanian Supreme Court, if necessary, according to the Economic Police of Klaipeda. The Klaipeda Regional Court has to make a decision within 37 days of the appeal. ¶2. COMMENT. Although the appeal is still pending, we are pleased to see further evidence that police and the judiciary -- even outside of the capital -- are taking IPR protection seriously and are willing to impose fines that may deter others from using pirated software. CLOUD