Microsoft Sues 3 S. California Assemblers

Launching a new attack on industry piracy, Microsoft Corp. said Wednesday that it has sued three Southern California computer assemblers, the result of “continuous sweeps” at swap meets and other sales venues.

The Redmond, Wash.-based software giant, whose Windows 95 system runs most personal computers, accused the companies in federal lawsuits filed in Los Angeles of copyright and trademark infringement. The suits allege that the companies loaded unlicensed Microsoft products onto computers they sell.

The companies named in the suits are Comp America in Tustin, BMI Computers Inc. in Los Angeles and Macro Computer Communication in Industry.

Microsoft, which is seeking unspecified damages and a halt to the alleged practice, and said it has settled privately with four other Southern California makers of PC clones.

In announcing the sweeps, Microsoft is taking a more aggressive course against the small system builders, as they prefer to be called. It also indicates that previous periodic attempts to halt some of the more prevalent forms of piracy simply haven’t worked.

“We’re now much more proactive,” said Jim Lowe, a Microsoft lawyer spearheading the campaign. “In the past, we’ve gone to swap meets from time to time. But now we have undercover investigators at those swap meets all the time--at every one of them.”

Although Microsoft is making sweeps throughout the country and in Canada, its crackdown is focused on Southern California, where, the company said, it finds the biggest group of offenders. Lowe called the computer swap meet in Pomona a “black hole” for the company’s products.

About 20% of the “several hundred” piracy complaints it gets every month involve Southern California companies, he said. “We don’t see it at the same volume in the Bay Area or in the New York-New Jersey area. Nothing equals what we see in Southern California.”

The main reason is the preponderance of clone makers in the area. He said they use the same copy of Windows 95, for example, to load on the hard drives of numerous machines, and sometimes provide bootleg copies of the programs along with the computer sales.

Microsoft said it tried to negotiate settlements with the three small operators before suing.

BMI’s lawyer, Ehsan Afaghi of Beverly Hills, charged that Microsoft simply “bulldozed” its way over the small computer assemblers. BMI’s owner, he said, “buys products in the marketplace and is not in a position to decide which is counterfeit.”

Anant Krishna, general manager of Comp America, said he wasn’t aware of the allegations. “Our software comes from [a Microsoft distributor], so it should be authorized,” he said.

The lawsuits were filed late last month.