In its suit, Siemens Industry Software contended that the defendant, medical device manufacturer Inzign, was both directly and vicariously liable for copyright infringement arising from the actions of its employee.
The case involves Siemens’ NX software, which can create computerised models of a product, develop physical products from these models, and put them to use with little or no physical testing.Inzign owns licences for three modules, each of which can be used only by a single user at any one time. He then took a laptop that his toolroom manager, Wong Quee Seng, had left in one of the drawers of the toolroom.
Low suggested that Inzign could “legalise” the infringement and attached a quotation for a licence to use one module for the price of S$79,587.In his judgment, Justice Gill found that Inzign was careless in its management of the laptop, which was left unsecured as a result of Wong’s negligence.