Kenya has one of the highest levels of creation of software technologies in Africa. Unfortunately, Kenya also has one of the highest levels of software piracy and software counterfeit in Africa, standing at a shocking rate of 78 percenr.
Software piracy and counterfeiting cause a lot of economic harm to genuine software companies. Some of the economic harm is the loss of market share to counterfeiters, which eats into the revenue margins of the genuine tech companies.
Statistics show that the most commonly pirated softwares are business solution ones. Many small businesses prefer to buy pirated and counterfeited software as it is cheaper than genuine products. For one to use a genuine software, they have to pay licence fees which may be out of reach for many small businesses.
Software piracy is the illegal act of using, distributing and selling software without permission from the genuine owner. Sellers of pirated software, gain access to the software and re-sell without authority from the owner. Such sellers end up gaining from illicit trade, while the genuine owner loses out on revenues.
Software piracy is now easier as there are many tech savvy professionals in Kenya, who are able to gain illegal access to genuine software for their own use.
Software counterfeiting meanwhile, is the illegal creation, distribution and re-sale of fake software packaged to resemble real software. Some businesses knowingly use pirated or counterfeited software while others remain unaware.
Pirated and counterfeited software is popular as it is cheaper and easier to access. While consumption of pirated and counterfeited software is high, there is a very huge risk that businesses expose themselves to. Often time, pirated and counterfeited software contain viruses and spyware which can in the long run be damaging to the business.
Piracy and counterfeiting is a headache for genuine tech companies, who loose large market and revenue share to illicit trade. Piracy is not a Kenyan problem, global statistic show that global piracy stands at 43 percent.
Piracy in turn harms the economy as there is loss of revenue, loss of taxes and loss of jobs. Lack of awareness and weak laws and enforcement mechanisms also contribute to this statistics. At times, businesses are not able to distinguish between real software and pirated/counterfeited software.
Tech companies may face challenges in preventing or managing piracy and counterfeiting due to weak laws and weak enforcement mechanisms.
Here are a few tips for tech companies to follow in managing piracy and counterfeit.
First is to get intellectual property protection as this is what can be used to manage the rest of the remedies. Tech companies can also use other forms of intellectual property like trade secrets, whereby the technical know-how behind the software is limited to a few people.
Tech companies should run public awareness campaign teaching the public how to distinguish between real and pirated/counterfeited software.
There are a number of legal remedies tech companies can resort to. These include criminal sanctions. The Copyright Act criminalises piracy through fines. In addition, the Act provides other remedies like seizure and destruction of pirated copies. Tech companies also have court remedies like getting injunctions preventing sale and distribution of such copies.
These remedies can help the genuine tech companies recover market and revenue loss from infringers in the form of monetary compensation.
