A technology company is accusing the United States Navy of pirating its software — and is suing the military branch for $600 million.
In a suit filed in a US Federal Claims court on July 15, Bitmanagement alleges that the US Navy installed its 3D virtual reality software "BS Contact Geo" onto "hundreds of thousands" of computers without permission from the company and without obtaining the appropriate licenses.
(We first saw the case over on TorrentFreak, and you can read Bitmanagement's full court filing below.)
The US Navy already had a small deal in place with Bitmanagement, the suit says: "In 2011 and 2012, Bitmanagement agreed to license its software to the Navy on a limited and experimental basis. Those individual PC-based licenses authorized the navy to install BS Contact Geo on just 38 computers for the purposes of testing, trial runs, and integration into Navy systems."
The US Navy apparently liked what it saw, and began negotiations for additional licenses — but installed the software onto its computers while they were ongoing, and before anything had been finalised, the suit alleges.
"Without Bitmanagement's advance knowledge or consent, the Navy installed BS Contact Go onto hundreds of thousands of computers," the court filing reads. "Bitmanagement did not license or otherwise authorize these uses of its software, and the Navy has never compensated Bitmanagement for these uses of Bitmanagement's software."
Bitmanagement says these alleged actions constitute "wilful copyright infringement" — and is seeking $596,308,103 in damages.
The US Navy has yet to file a response in court, and did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.
