06-Mar-2006

Mario Renato Uriarte Amaya in The New Cult of Dead Cow writes:

I have just discovered from El Diario (in Mexico) that in 1997, Microsoft together with other large companies (Adobe, Autodesk and Symantec) started an action against a small family company distributing computing equipment, “Consultores en Computación y Contabilidad” (CCC), for the alleged use of illegal software.

So it was that on 13 November of 1997, from the headquarters of Microsoft and other companies in the USA (not in their Mexican subsidiaries), came the order to their legal representative, Mr Carlos Schmidt Ruiz del Moral, to start this action against CCC.

In spite of being based on false allegations, an order to search the premises of CCC was granted. This was executed on 11 August and the Procuraduria General de la Republica invited the press. Rendón Alatorre, the founder of CCC writes, “They went in and broke everything. They examined the machines. They were surprised not to find anything. They were looking for equipment to copy software and didn't find any. They told me that as there were reporters outside, they had to take someone away”.

Having found nothing, the large corporations felt magnanimous and only demanded 10,000 dollars not to take CCC to court for being completely legal.

Faced with the inconsistency of the allegation, the Fiscalia Especial de Delitos de Propiedad Intelectual of the Procaduria General de la Republica could only decree that there was no case to answer in July 2000. Rendón said, “Two years after, the PGR exonerated me. But I lost my clients, like the Suprema Corte de Justicia de la Nación and Televisa. During this time, my sons, who were students, were marked out by their school mates as being the sons of a criminal. My wife had health problems, and in my case I am always afraid that they will return to my house”.

Once exonerated, Rendón tried to sue the companies in the United States, but these objected. They said that the court action had to take place on Mexican territory because that was where the fault was committed.

After three years during which the case passed through the Juzgado Primero de lo Civil del Distrito Federal, then the Octava Sala del Tribunal Superior de Justicia del Distrito Federal and the Tercer Tribunal Colegiado del Primer Circuito en el Distrito Federal, the chief judge, Victor Manuel Silveyra Gómez, ruled that the US companies should pay 90 million dollars to CCC and should pay the television stations Televisa and Tevevisión Azteca to announce the verdict.

This unprecedented judgement against the American companies in Mexico has still not been made known to the shareholders of the penalised companies, Microsoft and Symantec. As companies listed in the New York Stock Exchange they are obliged to report any legal actions against them to the Securities Exchange Commission.

In spite of this they omitted this information from their report of last December; so their shareholders are still unaware of their “modus operandi” in Mexico.

Next April their will be a meeting at the Tribunal Superior de Los Angeles during which the judge will be informed of the verdict and the damages that the companies are obliged to settle.

Now tell me, is this a suitable way of doing business? Is this the way to promote development? And a question to the users of Microsoft products: are you going to continue to use those products in spite of its behaviour?

Altova UModel 2006

JorgeBec in Ingenieria de Software posts a link to the UML modelling tool, Altova UModel 2006. Given the companies success with XMLSpy, this tool should be a great product.