[Image] FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Peter Beruk, Director of Domestic Anti-Piracy, (202) 452-1600, ext. 314 pberuk@spa.org SPA Increased Action Taken Against Software Pirates by 23% in 1995 Outlines plans for 1996 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Washington, D.C., March 14, 1996 Ð The Software Publishers Association's (SPA) continuing effort to crack down on software piracy worldwide achieved a record level of success in 1995. SPA took action against 586 organizations in the United States, an increase of 23 percent over 1994. The lawsuits and audits brought by SPA in the United States against software pirates in 1995 netted $2.6 million in penalties, bringing SPA's total piracy campaign receipts to more than $16 million since the program started in 1990. Additionally, SPA doubled the number of lawsuits brought outside the United States in the previous year. Domestically, calls to SPA's anti-piracy hotline, (800) 388-7478, increased by 24 percent from 1994 to 1995. Based on these reports, SPA filed lawsuits or conducted audits on 185 organizations, six of which resulted in settlements greater than $100,000, an increase of 17 percent over the previous year. Monies collected are used to fund an extensive international anti-piracy program, educational materials, investigations and litigation. Anti-piracy information is also available on the World Wide Web (http://www.spa.org). Many people use SPA as a resource to obtain information about the legal use of software, others to report instances of piracy. "During 1995, SPA began to change fundamentally the worldwide perception that stealing intellectual property is acceptable," said Sandra A. Sellers, vice president of intellectual property education and enforcement. "With the recent hiring of two experienced attorneys and others to create teams to fight piracy in Asia/Pacific and Latin America, we will redouble our education and enforcement efforts in 1996 to spread this message throughout the world. SPA has increased its anti-piracy staff by 50 percent to meet the growing challenge to reduce the level of worldwide software piracy, estimated at more than $8 billion dollars in 1994." The new staff will concentrate on broadening SPA's educational efforts and further developing SPA's international anti-piracy enforcement program. SPA's coverage in Asia/Pacific will expand to include Japan, Hong Kong, China, Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Indonesia and India. In Latin America, SPA will focus primarily on Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Venezuela and Chile. On the educational front, in 1995 SPA gave its Certified Software Manager (CSM) course in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Israel, Japan, Mexico and Colombia. In the first half of 1996, the software asset management seminar will also be offered in Singapore, China, India and 15 additional Latin American countries. Plans are also underway to offer the course in late 1996 in Russia, Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong. SPA continues to expand its educational tools to teach the public how to use software legally. SPA just released a new video, "It Could Have Been So Easy," designed for the corporate world and will soon release another video, "A Shared Set of Values," for the higher education community. These videos join SPAudit, KeyAudit, the Software Management Guide and other SPA materials, to create a strong public awareness program. SPA's focus is on companies developing and publishing software applications and interactive content. SPA is the leading trade association of the desktop software industry, representing the leading publishers as well as many start-up firms in the business, consumer and education markets. Its 1,200 members account for 90 percent of the sales of the U.S. packaged software industry. Hundreds of these companies look to SPA to protect their intellectual property and promote trade in the United States and around the world. SPA is an international organization with offices both in the United States and Europe. SPA press releases are available through SPA's Web site at http://www.spa.org or through Fax-on-Demand at (800) 637-6823. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- SPA Press ReleasesSPA Piracy [Image] ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright 1996 Software Publishers Association. All rights reserved.