Microsoft takes off gloves in war on pirates

Microsoft Corp has lodged its first anti-piracy complaint with China's copyright bureau against three mainland software producers.

The United States software giant filed the case against two companies in Tianjin and one in Beijing, a Microsoft spokesman said, in its highest profile attack to date on the rising tide of software piracy in the mainland.

Senior Chinese officials have pledged to back Microsoft if the evidence supports the filing.

'We're looking into the case. Providing they manufactured the software without Microsoft's approval, we will prosecute,' said Yan Xiaohong, a vice-director of the patent bureau, during a briefing with reporters earlier this week.

Instead of launching action against companies and customers who buy fake software, as it has done in the past, Microsoft is now going after leading replicators able to sell large volumes of software to mainland companies for export to the US and other countries.

The case may have deeper ramifications. There are indications the manufacturers may have had connections to China's military and that they may have been part of a larger group set up to sell counterfeit software abroad.

According to Microsoft, the alleged counterfeiters buy expensive machines and set up factories to crank out large volumes of fake goods, often stamped with the special marks Microsoft employs to try to fend off piracy.