Interesting but let's see the details.
If the disks are unlicensed, ie Microsoft hasn't been paid, I will be very surprised.
Comet are already at death's door.
Microsoft has taken legal action against UK PC retailer Comet, claiming that the company created and sold 94,000 counterfeit copies of Windows Vista and Windows XP recovery discs which were then sold on to customers.
Microsoft is accusing Comet of producing the counterfeits at a factory in Hampshire and then selling the media to customers from its retail outlets across the UK.
“As detailed in the complaint filed today, Comet produced and sold thousands of counterfeit Windows CDs to unsuspecting customers in the United Kingdom,” said David Finn, associate general counsel, Worldwide Anti-Piracy and Anti-Counterfeiting at Microsoft. “Comet’s actions were unfair to customers. We expect better from retailers of Microsoft products — and our customers deserve better, too.”
Two points stand out here for me though.
- This case involves recovery discs and not the OS installed on the PCs.
- Reading between the lines it seems that Comet might have been selling Windows recovery discs to people who had lost/misplaced theirs and that Microsoft wasn’t getting a cut of this.
If you have any doubts as to the legitimacy of any Microsoft software you might have, take a trip over to http://www.howtotell.com to learn more about how to identify dodgy software and, if in any doubt, report it to Microsoft.
It goes to show that even if you buy from a reputable source, you can still get burned.
[UPDATE: A statement from Comet doesn’t deny creating recovery media but the company ’sought and received legal advice from leading counsel to support its view that the production of recovery discs did not infringe Microsoft’s intellectual property’ and the company ‘believes its customers had been adversely affected by the decision to stop supplying recovery discs with each new Microsoft Operating System based computer.’
