US Government Pirates Military Software, Pays $50m Settlement

Looks like the US government has become one of the worst pirates around after using thousands of copies of military software without a licence. The company behind the software have said that they recently discovered the software was installed in significantly more machines than they had licensed.

Texas based company, Apptricity, provided the government with the logistics programs that are used by the army and has done so for nearly ten yeras. The Department of Justice basically got caught out over using their software and has since paid a settlement of $50 million to the company, which is around £31 million.

While the Department of Justice hasn’t commented on the subject, you would think they knew better in the first place! Apptricity did originally call for a staggering $224 million, but must be happy with the settlement (since they accepted) and will now use the money to expand their company.

“Apptricity is now incredibly energised to use the settlement resolution as a catalyst for aggressive investment in our team, our solutions and our untapped market opportunities,” said Randy Lieberman, Apptricity’s chief financial officer.

Given the US has been making a push to combat piracy with near brute force in recent years, you would have expect better from them, but at least they were willing to pay for that mistake.

Thank you BBC for providing us with this information.

Image courtesy of BBC.