Europcar settles big for alleged copyright breach

Stan Beer
Friday, 23 September 2005 10:00

IT Industry - Development

The Australian office of car rental company Europcar, CLA Trading, has paid $200,000 in one of the largest settlements for alleged corporate software licence breaches ever to be made in Australia.

The claim, made by the Business Software Association of Australia (BSAA) was settled without any admission of liability by CLA Trading. However, the BSAA says it made the claim based on strong evidence that CLA Trading, trading as Europcar, was using more than 400 unlicensed copies of software in its Australian operations.

The Business Software Association of Australia (BSAA) members include Adobe, Apple, Autodesk, Microsoft and Symantec. The Australian organisation is affiliated with the Busines Software Alliance, whose members operate globally in 65 countries and develop the software, hardware and the technologies building electronic commerce.

Under the terms of the settlement, CLA Trading also has warranted that it has purchased licenses for all software programs used and agreed to ensure that all copies of BSAA members' software are licensed in future.

Europcar is one of the leading global car rental companies. Founded in Paris in 1949, the company today operates a fleet of over 220,000 vehicles at 2,650 locations in 118 different countries in Europe, The Middle East, Africa, the Indian Ocean, Central America, Mexico, the Caribbean and Asia-Pacific.