Matriplast, a Buenos Aires plastics company, had used Microsoft software without licenses since about 2001. Microsoft obtained a pre-trial court order to inspect the company’s computers, and on October 29, 2021, a court-appointed IT expert examined them. He found that Matriplast could not show it had bought any of the installed licenses, and that the license numbers had been copied from another licensee.
What the appeals court decided
- Limitation period: Matriplast argued that 20 years of use meant the claim was time-barred. The court disagreed. Suspicion is not enough to start the clock, which runs only from actual knowledge of the infringement, here the date of the court inspection.
- Damages: compensation is the price of the licenses that should have been bought, not the infringer’s profits. The court upheld the award of US$29,059.12 plus interest.
- Reputational and punitive damages: rejected.
- Uninstall: the trial judge had refused to order removal, treating payment of the license price as a purchase. The appeals court reversed that and ordered the software uninstalled within ten days, with the trial court to verify it.
Why it matters
The court spelled out the economics. If paying the license price after being caught were the only consequence, it would always pay not to buy licenses: an infringer who is never caught saves the money, and one who is caught only pays what it owed in the first place.
“That’s exactly the math every infringer does. Argentina’s courts have now said it doesn’t add up.”
Chris Luijten, founder of ITCA
Source: Judgment of the Cámara Nacional de Apelaciones en lo Civil, Sala M, June 27, 2025.
Read the judgment (Spanish)
Skip to PDF contentHeader photo: Elsapucai, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (cropped and toned).
