NEWS
NEWS
NEWS
US Navy accused of pirating 558k copies of VR software
German software company Bitmanagement Software GmbH has accused the United States Navy of illegal installing over 558,000 copies of its BS Contact Geo product, a virtual reality program used for visualizing real world geography in a virtual environment.
According to Bitmanagement, the company offered a small batch of software licenses to the Navy on a trial basis, but the Navy then copied that software on a large number of computers well beyond the scope of the original trial without paying for them.
Here is an excerpt from the lawsuit, which includes some odd self-promotion on Bitmanagement’s part when referring to the quality of the BS Contact Geo program:
“In 2011 and 2012, Bitmanagement agreed to license its software to the Navy on a limited and experimental basis. Those individual PC-based licenses authorized the Navy to install BS Contact GEO on a total of just 38 computers for the purposes of testing, trials runs, and integration into Navy systems. In order to facilitate such testing and integration of the software on Navy computers in preparation for the large scale licensing desired by the Navy, it was necessary for Bitmanagment to remove the control mechanism that tracked and limited use of the software.”
“Based on the quality and performance of BS Contact Geo—including the interactive functionality and high-quality graphics that make it particularly useful to large military organizations—the Navy determined that it would deploy the software on large scale, and began negotiations with Bitmanagement for the purchase of numerous additional licenses.”
“While those negotiations were ongoing, however, and without Bitmanagement’s advance knowledge or consent, the Navy installed BS Contact Geo software onto hundreds of thousands of computers. Bitmanagement did not license or otherwise authorize these uses of its software, and the Navy has never compensated Bitmanagement for these uses of Bitmanagement’s software.”
Bitmanagement is seeking damages of over $596 million, which the company says is the market value of the unpaid software licenses. The Navy has yet to comment on the lawsuit.
Photo by DVIDSHUB
A message from John Furrier, co-founder of SiliconANGLE:
Support our mission to keep content open and free by engaging with theCUBE community. Join theCUBE’s Alumni Trust Network, where technology leaders connect, share intelligence and create opportunities.
- 15M+ viewers of theCUBE videos, powering conversations across AI, cloud, cybersecurity and more
- 11.4k+ theCUBE alumni — Connect with more than 11,400 tech and business leaders shaping the future through a unique trusted-based network.
About SiliconANGLE Media
SiliconANGLE Media is a recognized leader in digital media innovation, uniting breakthrough technology, strategic insights and real-time audience engagement. As the parent company of SiliconANGLE, theCUBE Network, theCUBE Research, CUBE365, theCUBE AI and theCUBE SuperStudios — with flagship locations in Silicon Valley and the New York Stock Exchange — SiliconANGLE Media operates at the intersection of media, technology and AI.
Founded by tech visionaries John Furrier and Dave Vellante, SiliconANGLE Media has built a dynamic ecosystem of industry-leading digital media brands that reach 15+ million elite tech professionals. Our new proprietary theCUBE AI Video Cloud is breaking ground in audience interaction, leveraging theCUBEai.com neural network to help technology companies make data-driven decisions and stay at the forefront of industry conversations.
