Microsoft sues eight resellers over dodgy stickers

Microsoft has announced it's suing eight PC resellers over claims they haven’t been using genuine Certificates of Authenticity (COA).

The COAs are usually labels which come attached to a PC or piece of software to indicate it's a real Microsoft product. Following a sting operation, Redmond found several resellers attaching the COAs to counterfeit products or using counterfeit COAs.

Bonnie MacNaughton, senior attorney in Microsoft's law and corporate affairs group, said the lawsuits were only filed after the resellers had been given information and notification that they were breaking the law, and encouraged them to use legitimate software.

The software giant has been researching the trade in fake COAs by buying up a load of labels and products, and checking their validity. As well as discovering a trade in Asia for making bogus labels, Microsoft found some dodgy resellers removing the labels from genuine products and adding them to pirate copies.

The COA crackdown is part of Microsoft's attempt to take on the software pirates. Recently, it announced it will replace pirate versions of Windows XP with genuine ones.