Friday, June 01, 2007 Net cafe owners sued for pirated softwares By Rhodamae M. Hernandez
CHARGES have been filed against two Internet cafe owners and a cafe administrator after the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) Anti-Economic Crimes Task Force found pirated softwares in their computers.
Charged with violation of the Republic Act 8293, otherwise known as Intellectual Property Code of the Philippines, are: John Radley Belen Barrientos, of Rolling Hills subdivision and owner of Clickerz Internet Cafe located at City Triangle, CM Recto street, Davao City; Nigerian national Theophilus Ike Adiha, owner of Lafia Internet Cafe along C.M. Recto street, resident of Candelaria street in Ecoland, and his cafe administrator Giovanni Formatera Vallecera.
Clickerz and Lafia Internet cafes were raided Wednesday by CIDG operatives.
In an affidavit, Peter L. Calimag, legal counsel of Microsoft Corporation, said that sometime in April 2006, he was informed by the CIDG Anti-Fraud and Commercial Crimes Division that they were able to identify internet cafes in the city that illegally engaged in renting out computer units, which contain unauthorized copies of Microsoft's software computer programs.
He said the CIDG sent him a print out of the computer screen of some of the computers owned and operated by Internet cafe owners.
He said upon examination of the screen shot from the computers, he immediately noticed that the computer programs had an identical product keys.
Calimag said they then applied for search warrant before Branch 33 at the Manila Regional Trial Court and on May 29, Judge Reynaldo Ros issued the search warrant against these Internet cafes.
He said on May 30, they served the search warrant and discovered some Internet cafes have indeed used pirated softwares in their computers, thus the filing of the case.
Confiscated from Clickerz were 28 sets of computers while 59 others were seized from Lafia.
The suspects are now under the custody of CIDG-Southern Mindanao.
