Copyright: US Navy must pay German company

The U.S. Navy installed said software on more than 500,000 computers even before the conclusion of a license agreement for software from the German company Bitmanagement Software GmbH. Since this constituted a copyright infringement, legal proceedings were initiated. Ultimately, a back license payment of $154,000 was ordered.

Virtual Reality for the US Military

The German company was in negotiations with the U.S. Navy six years ago to sell its BS Contact Geo software. This is 3D virtual reality software. At the time of further license negotiations, the U.S. Navy owned only 34 licenses. Accordingly, the software should have been installed on only 34 computers. However, the military actually installed the software on a total of 558,466 computers before the license was signed. The Bitmanagement Software GmbH then filed a lawsuit for intentional copyright infringement. Almost 600 million US dollars were demanded.

Small back license payment ordered

The U.S. Navy responded and deleted the software from its computers. However, the lawsuit remained in place. Bitmanagement commented, “The government knew or should have known that it was required to obtain a license to copy the Bitmanagement software to each of the devices on which the Bitmanagement software was installed. The government nevertheless failed to obtain such licenses.” The U.S. Navy disagreed with this account, stating that it had a right to copy the software. It also stated that it had procured additional licenses for the software.

Bitmanagement then demanded US$1,067.76 for each additional license procured, which the U.S. Navy rejected with reference to the ordinary license price of US$200. The court ultimately deemed an additional payment of license fees of $154,000 to be appropriate.