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wcong · 22-06-2007, 10:41 AM

A fourth Singapore-linked firm in six months has been raided on suspicion of software infringement, after the Business Software Alliance (BSA) was tipped off.

A local land-surveying consultancy on Monday became the latest company to be raided by police.

Officers from the Intellectual Property Rights branch of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) seized a server, 10 CD-ROMs, 24 desktop and two laptop computers from the company, the police said in a statement yesterday.

The firm may have breached several licensing agreements because it had installed software on more computers than permitted, said the police.

It is also suspected of having installed pirated software into its server and computers. These programs, which came from Adobe, Autodesk and Microsoft, could be worth $180,000, said the BSA in a separate media statement.

The alliance, an international organisation that represents the commercial software industry, educates consumers on issues such as software management, copyright protection and cyber security.

It relaunched an anti-piracy hotline in February 2005, soliciting for tip-offs on companies using illegal software and promising monetary rewards to informants who gave strong leads. But not all calls received are acted upon.

Said Mr Tarun Sawney, BSA's Asia director for anti-piracy: "Of the 116 calls we received this year, only about 33 per cent were leads we could follow up on. The rest were either hearsay or enquiries."

In January, the police raided the Singapore office of an international computer gaming and digital products company. And last month, Indonesian officials, acting on tip-offs received by the BSA, carried out anti-piracy raids on two Singapore companies in Batam.

Said Mr Sawney: "Other than the ones raided this year, we have seen raids on about five Singapore companies in Thailand and Malaysia in the past two years."

But the raids do not indicate a rise in software piracy in Singapore. In fact, the Republic is one of 20 countries in the world with the lowest software piracy rates, according to Ms Liew Woon Yin, director-general of the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore.

She said: "The level of software piracy in Singapore has fallen every year. Last year, piracy was 39 per cent, down from 48 per cent in 2002."

But Ms Liew acknowledged there are still companies that "continue to under-license or use pirated software for business purposes".

Companies can get their software certified legal for free under the BSA's SAM Advantage Programme.

The organisation has extended its deadline to July 15 because "a number of companies have told us at the last minute that they want to participate, but require more time to conduct their self-audits", said Mr Sawney.

Since the Copyright Act was amended in January 2005, those found guilty of copyright infringement face a six-month jail term or a maximum fine of $20,000 or both. - TODAY