Federal prosecutors said Tuesday that they had arrested Joe Huong, 34, and were anticipating the arrests of at least two others. Huong is one of five suspects who allegedly made 200,000 illegal copies of Microsoft's MS-DOS and Windows programs in Silicon Valley in the early 1990s.
Huong, a native of Taiwan, was arrested Saturday at Los Angeles International Airport while was waiting for a flight to Taipei, prosecutors said.
He was arraigned Monday in Los Angeles, where he remains in custody. Two other defendants are believed to be out of the country, and the remaining two are expected to turn themselves in during the next two weeks, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Leland B. Altschuler.
According to the indictment, the defendants operated out of Sunnyvale and San Jose from May 1992 and November 1993. Officials say it was Huong who went to a printing company to have the Microsoft software illegally copied.
MS-DOS and Windows are the two most popular operating systems for personal computers.
Microsoft learned of the alleged copyright infringement, filed a civil suit in 1992 and asked the U.S. attorney's office in San Jose to conduct a criminal investigation.
A grand jury in San Jose issued a 16-count indictment in the case in August 1995. Authorities waited to act until Huong, who had been out of the United States, returned, Altschuler said.
The defendants were indicted on a variety of charges, including contempt, perjury, copyright infringement, trafficking in counterfeit goods and conspiracy to traffic in counterfeit goods. Each charge carries a penalty of five years in prison, Altschuler said.
The owners of the now-defunct printing business are also among the defendants. Last month, Microsoft won a $24.8 million award against them, triple the some $8 million the company lost as a result of the piracy, said company lawyer James Lowe.
The owners are out of the country, but since the defendants' assets have been frozen Microsoft should recover some of the damages, Lowe said.
archive