back to article Adobe and software pals haul Forever 21 to court over piracy allegations

A trio of software firms is taking a large US-based fashion retailer to court for allegedly pirating their software. Adobe, Autodesk and Corel claim that clothes bazaar Forever 21 infringed their copyright by illegally copying a raft of well-known software tools and not paying license fees. Forever 21 is a $3.8bn retailer …

  1. Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

    Well...

    "According to the companies’ filing with the US District Court of Northern California (available here – 12 page PDF), the amount of money they’ve lost in profits as a result of the copying has not yet been ascertained..."

    ... but as it's likely to be a minimum of 1 copy of something somewhere; that, at the very minimum must equate to around 100 gazeelion-beelion US restitutional dollars-worth of lost profit by the measure of some "friendly" West Texas kangaroo court.

    1. Tom Samplonius

      Re: Well...

      "...West Texas kangaroo court..."? Maybe some science? Because statistically, West Texas rules in favor less often than the US average. However, West Texas was setup to process such suits more quickly. West Texas implement rules on the maximum number of pages that could submitted, etc, that reduced the length of the proceedings. So, West Texas is the preferred places to file these types of suits.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Lol

    It's probably just very disorganised IT bods who weren't on the ball with licence tracking, or they were imaging PCs with the applications on. I've seen this in loads of places where they were not really what I'd call pirating but were non compliant nonetheless.

    While I sympathise that IT people are overworked, it's actually not that hard to manage if you put your mind to it so in this case despite the above I'm actually all for this lawsuit because it might push IT people to be a little more professional in their attitudes going forward. It will also be a nice way to push budget in the right direction - "I could do it the easy way, but just think what happened to Forever 21 with their $500M fine!". That would get the PHB's attention pretty quickly and reduce the chanting of JFDI from the project managers too :)

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: Lol

      "I could do it the easy way, but just think what happened to Forever 21 with their $500M fine!"

      In that case you'd better work out the difference between fines and damages otherwise it would damage your credibility.

    2. Keven E.

      If it talks like a pirate...

      ...or they were imaging PCs with the applications on. I've seen this in loads of places where they were not really what I'd call pirating...

      So when the software phones home to get an update and checks to see if this is a registered, working license, the update engine sent out alerts because this was the same group of 100 licenses from the same IP bank the got the same patch 257 times.

      Yarrrrr, matey! Blind fold 'em and make'm walk the plank!

    3. Captain Scarlet Silver badge

      Re: Lol

      I'm surprised they haven't gone in with auditors like MS, IBM, etc... normally do. IBM Software audits being horrible.

    4. Shades
      Stop

      Re: Lol

      Any use of "going forward" invalidates your argument no matter how valid it may be.

      1. h4rm0ny

        Re: Lol

        Oh please, forgive us for using phrases you don't approve of, grand[pa|ma]. We are young and foolish and haven't yet learnt that new phrases shouldn't enter the English language.

  3. Ragequit
    Joke

    Forever 21 - "It was a youthful indiscretion."

  4. Turtle

    Oh well, if "written proof" will suffice..

    If "written proof" will do, they'll give you all the "written proof" you could ever want, all day long. Yes they will!

    1. big_D Silver badge

      Re: Oh well, if "written proof" will suffice..

      After a lightning strike hit one of our factories, we had a couple of hundred dead DEC VT100 terminals. According to COCO they were restricted high tech and had to be destroyed, so that they could not be exported to Eastern Block countries.

      We had to have them physically destroyed (crushed in a car crusher) and provide a signed certificate of proof that it had been done. That was a legally binding document.

      I assume that Forever 21 will be required to produce something similar, that is a valid document, recognised by the court.

  5. Callam McMillan

    From what I can see so far, I'm sympathetic to Adobe and co. This isn't a student or a one man band that's being chased. When you become a multi-billion dollar company, you should spend a bit of time getting your house into order, stop being a cheapskate, and buy some software licences (or keep your current licences in order). I would also imagine, there has been opportunities for Forever 21 to make an appropriate payment to get themselves licenced without the need to go to court.

    1. JLV

      OMG, am I gonna support Adobe???

      I've been a dev in a shop that used pirated tools. 1 disk and 1 manual for 20 devs. no training. A 'do not use illegal software' sign on the PHB's door. A polite "we'll think about it" every time we asked to fix this.

      The cherry on top was a support call we made, without asking the boss, to figure out why the API wasn't working.

      Support - "That license # you gave us, that's for an evaluation copy. Who did you say you were?"

      Willfull piracy by someone who could afford being honest? Yeah, they can medieval Forever21 if that's the case.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Adobe do audits of companies that use thier software

    I've been on the pointy end of one of those (expired copy of Elements Trial on the corporate laptop, and a polite but firm request for me to remove it asap). They were quite reasonable about it. I suspect Forever 21 has forced them to be unreasonable (which is fair enough).

    1. joed

      Re: Adobe do audits of companies that use thier software

      what's wrong with expired copy? It does not work so it should not infringe any license. Now, using the same license across multiple systems is different story. Yet one would believe that Adobe's licensing (requires network access for activation) was smart enough to prevent that (and they will definitely help you to lose the license if the system crashed without activation etc, not to mention they make it such a pain to look up actual license number). And Autodesk is the worst, just try transferring some old software between PCs - will not activate just because they decided it's too old (v2007 circa 2012).

      Usually both side are to blame and users (that "do require" admin rights) complete the mess.

  7. Amorous Cowherder

    Usually software companies are quite relaxed in so far as they give a little bit of time to prove you making moves to sort yourself out. Even Oracle, who are like vultures when it comes to licenses, usually give you a couple of months breathing room when your licenses don't come up to scratch, providing you stay in contact with your account manager and prove you're sorting it out. I doubt this has come out of nowhere. Sounds like Adobe have been bugging F21 for a while and F21 have not been opening the red headed letters that have been arriving, so Adobe had no choice but to drag F21 into the courts to get their money.

    It's not hard to stay "in license". As an individual I pay my Adobe licenses by way of my CC subscription. I use the software on my photos and I make money from my images, it's only fair I pay for my tools. I wouldn't like it if someone ripped of my images without paying, so I don't see why I should rip off Adobe.

  8. Mark Allen
    WTF?

    Happens too often

    I've worked for Software companies who get upset if someone steals the software they produce, but don't think twice about using Pirated copies of Office, Photoshop and Winzip.

    What is really annoying about companies like this is they don't even need the stolen software. OpenOffice, Paint.NET and 7Zip will do the same jobs legally for free.

    Wouldn't be surprised if they only ever used Photoshop to crop images like many of the people who steal it...

    1. phil dude
      Coat

      Re: Happens too often

      Yes I read "Corel compression software" as LOL!

      P.

      1. Mark Allen

        Re: Happens too often

        I assume Corel's company name derives from "corral". They seem to corral so many other products that the didn't create and attempt to profit from them - Wordperfect, Winzip, Paint Shop Pro, WinDVD being a few that spring to mind.

        So my money is on Winzip being the "Corel Compression Software".

    2. Anonymous C0ward

      Re: Happens too often

      Office and Photoshop maybe, but do you know anyone who's paid for WinZip?

      1. BongoJoe

        Re: Happens too often

        but do you know anyone who's paid for WinZip?

        Well, does paying for PKZip count? Decades ago for sure, but I did pay.

        1. big_D Silver badge

          Re: Happens too often

          I bought PKZip as well... Must still have the licence somewhere.

    3. Lord Lien

      Re: Happens too often

      I recommend Gimp (http://www.gimp.org) as its multi platform, over paint.net.

      Most users never use the full functionality of MS Office/Photoshop so the free alternatives are ideal for them, but from years of being in the game it seems people turn their noses up at them, as they have a "because they are free, they must be crap" attitude.

      I got story a few years back where I managed to recover a powerpoint that got corrupt some how. MS Office would not open it but I was able in OpenOffice. I was not a full restore but well over 60% of it was back & I got a six pack as a thanks. Always nice thank you in my eyes ;)

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Hmmm. maybe pirating isn't an accident...

    It's not the first time Forever 21 gets accused of pirating.

    Check how many designers are complaining with the result of this Google Query:

    https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=forever+21+copying+designers

    Or this article for more precise details: http://jezebel.com/5822762/how-forever-21-keeps-getting-away-with-designer-knockoffs

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Hmmm. maybe pirating isn't an accident...

      Forever21 is Notorious in the L.A. fashion district. In addition to drawing the ire of half of the legitimate designers in Los Angeles, their management is known for running their internal business in the style of Orwell and Kafka. Not a fun place to work, and their employees have been in line to sue them along with their own suppliers. Their management figured out they can stall the local courts long enough that by the time it goes to trial, they will have made enough money by acting illegally to get away with it as often as not. No surprise that their approach to software is the same. One of their disgruntled employees probably called the BSA on them for not paying them for overtime.

      http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/forever-21-lawsuit/

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Licensing shenanigans

    would help if software companies made licensing easier, on upgrading an entire engineering departments pc's sorting out the autodesk licenses was a nightmare, despite the fact engineering policy was always to upgrade to newest version and have full support in place. Months of you are running illegal copies letters/email followed by the same conversation

    That said I've seen a lot of unlicensed software over the years and wouldn't be surprised if they are right in this case.

  11. Fatman
    WTF?

    Forever 21 sued for pirating

    What the hell do you expect????

    After all, manglement is out to maximize shareholder value, and fuck companies like Adobe, etc.. who expect to get paid.

  12. Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

    "It's probably just very disorganised IT bods who weren't on the ball with licence tracking, or they were imaging PCs with the applications on." ; "would help if software companies made licensing easier"

    It's possible, and if so I sympathize with Forever 21 I suppose if this is the case.

    But having done a stint of IT work recently, I've seen businesses also where they want Office and so on (even if they are doing nothing that'd make a difference if they had Office, LibreOffice, or even just the "notepad on steroids" text editor that newer Windows versions have for that matter.) They aren't that concerned over how it gets on there. We bought copies of slightly older Office versions, and did it all legit. But I could easily see this being a case of them buying like 1 copy of the software, and either finding it doesn't actually deactivate when it phones home so they just kept installing more and more copies (or possibly it *does* deactivate and they installed a crack!)

  13. Lord Lien

    Most IT bods have installed software on a moody licence at some point in their career, purely out of necessity. A company I worked at many moons ago were audited & it turns out two office licences were used twice, not bad for a company of about 400+ users. We were expecting worse. The company that did the audit were more concerned about the font licences than anything else.

    Don't think most people know that fonts need to be licensed. Had a company merge with another one & had the magic words :-

    "Can we put these fonts on the font server?"

    "Yeap, if you show me the licences."

    "Err, err, err"

    "& don't even think about installing them locally!"

    Adobe, Microsoft & Symantec don't go after a company thats missing 1 or 2 licences, so I do wonder how bad it is & who's going to get the chop at Forever 21 once its all over. They will need a sacrificial lamb.

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