After almost two years, Autodata has been successful in gaining guilty verdicts against two sellers of counterfeit software through the court system.
In 2013 – and as part of a story featured on BBC’s Fake Britain – Autodata followed up on the arrests made by Kent Trading Standards of Ricky Piggot and Michelle Blundell of Sidcup in Kent with its own private prosecution.
Blundell had posed as an employee of Autodata and had been contacting unsuspecting garages offering them Autodata at a reduced price. She then used her accomplice to visit and install the software, which was not genuine and created safety risks if used to repair customer’s vehicles.
Both were found guilty of Copyright and Trademark offences and ordered to pay a fine to Autodata as laid down by the court.
An Autodata spokesperson commented: “We are pleased that we have been successful in this case, which was helped by the fact that one of the guilty parties was filmed in the process of selling counterfeit Autodata and later broadcast by the BBC.
“We will continue to enforce our IP to remove old counterfeit technical information from sale by those who think they can operate this way and not be caught.”
This is one of several operations that Autodata and its Primary Authority Slough Trading Standards have been working on following reports from customers and its own investigations.
