By Chua Hian Hou

SMALL home-grown companies have been offered a less painful way to purge pirated software from their computers. If they run voluntary audits on their computers and clear the pirated copies, they will get discounts on legitimate software.

And even if these audits root out bootleg programs, the companies will enjoy some protection from being sued by companies like Microsoft, Apple and Adobe.

This deal, an extension of a similar one aimed at bigger companies two years ago, is a 'soft touch' way to promote the use of legitimate software.

The SME IT Protect initiative, as this has been named, was launched yesterday by the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (Ipos).

Trade associations like the Singapore Infocomm Technology Federation, the Association of Small and Medium Enterprises (ASME) and Business Software Alliance (BSA) are backing it.

The move is aimed at getting businesses 'to do the right thing', said Ipos director- general Liew Woon Yin.

BSA's regional director Jeffrey Hardee observed that small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) may not otherwise bother to track the kinds of software in their employees' machines because 'it is not a business focus for them'.

They thus risk being caught breaking the copyright laws, since the BSA, as the software-industry watchdog, gets more than 20 tip-offs about such breaches every month, he said.

No detailed statistics exist on the number of companies sued because most cases are settled out-of-court.

The Straits Times understands that at least three publicly-listed companies have been caught using pirated software.

Other cases include that of interior design firm PDM International, which was fined $30,000 for having 51 unauthorised copies of Microsoft, Adobe and AutoDesk software in 2006.

Mr Hardee explained that doing an audit will enable companies to list all software programs installed and identify the unauthorised versions. The BSA will not take action even if companies run the audit but keep the results in-house.

But if the BSA later gets information that a company which completed the audit is using pirated software, it will contact the firm and give it 14 days to make good on this before taking legal action.

A 2007 BSA survey found that 37 per cent of computers here - just over a third - are running pirated software.

ASME's head of member relations Anne Tay said SMEs are likely to be interested in getting their audits done, but the number which will actually get down to it 'is less certain'.

SMEs which already know they are using pirated software will not bite since they know what 'going legit' will cost them.

Interest is thus likely to come from SMEs unsure of how legitimate they are, and also from SMEs using genuine software because they know they will breeze through the audit and qualify for discounted software, she added.

This article was first published in The Straits Times.