Press release
ITAC owner is ordered to pay £2.5million in damages and then receives a prison sentence after being found in contempt of court
Wednesday 28th January 2009: Today Microsoft announced another major victory against Manchester-based reseller ITAC, after its owner, Barry Omesuh was ordered to pay £2.5million in damages for infringing Microsoft's rights.
Microsoft has obtained a judgment of £2.5 million in damages against Mr Omesuh for his latest infringements, and will be implementing an earlier Court Order entitling it to sell Mr Omesuh's properties in order to partly discharge his debts to Microsoft.
Mr Omesuh was also found in contempt of court for breaching Court Orders issued in March 2008. Mr Omesuh was given a total of seven custodial sentences at the Royal Courts of Justice in London, ranging in duration between one and nine months, all of which are to be served concurrently.
The conclusion of this recent court case is the latest in a series of legal disputes in which Mr Omesuh was found to have infringed Microsoft's intellectual property rights. Mr Omesuh compounded the situation by consistently flouting court orders made against him regarding the disclosure of his assets. In her judgment on the contempt issue, Mrs Justice Proudman said: "The defendant was a wholly unreliable witness who on his own admission told a number of bare-faced lies about relevant matters over a period of time."
Graham Arthur, anti-piracy attorney at Microsoft UK said: "This case against ITAC and Mr Omesuh shows that Microsoft takes a zero tolerance approach to anyone who undermines the level playing field for our retailer community. We're working hard, sometimes behind the scenes, to ensure the software reseller market is a place where all retailers can compete on an equal footing. We want to make sure that retailers caught cheating the system are held accountable for their damaging actions. We caught ITAC trading illegally more than once which shows how determined we are to protect genuine, honest businesses from being undercut by unscrupulous traders. In today's climate, we believe this is more important than ever, particularly when the culprits blatantly persist in their unlawful trading."
Background information on the court cases
Microsoft launched legal proceedings against ITAC in 2004 for the reseller's involvement in parallel importing*. In February 2006, ITAC agreed to pay Microsoft £1 million compensation for this infringement and promised never to do it again.
Despite this promise, ITAC continued to jeopardise the profitability of legitimate resellers by unlawfully trading in Microsoft software.
In 2008, Mr Omesuh was found liable for infringing Microsoft's intellectual property rights again. In March of that year, Microsoft obtained a Court Order freezing Mr Omesuh's assets and ordering him to tell Microsoft where they were.
In this latest court case, the High Court found that Mr Omesuh lied about the amount of assets he owned and therefore was in contempt of court. As punishment, Mr Omesuh received seven custodial sentences. Separately, he must also pay £2.5m in damages to Microsoft. Part of Mr Omesuh's debt to Microsoft will be recouped by selling his holiday home.
