Working with pirated intellectual properties ; smuggling : pirating intellectual properties

Fatawa Question

Salam. Three months ago, I was hired as senior engineer by-----consultants in UK. The firm’s clients are local utility companies that need solutions to civil, structural, mechanical and electrical problems. I manage these projects and deal with the associated clients. The competition for winning consulting contracts is fierce. When my company started in business two years ago, it had only a few personal computers and the bare minimum of engineering, accounting and office automation software. As the company grew, it added more PCs and circulated more copies of the original software, along with unauthorized versions of more sophisticated software tools. There were no funds to buy legitimate software. In fact, the company cancelled maintenance contracts on the hardware and operating system software during these lean times. Now, we’re located in a new office park. Business is booming, because the company focus is on quality work at a reasonable price. Just yesterday, my boss told me that he wanted me to take over as manager of information systems resources. It’s not that big a deal. It takes only one day a week to keep track of all the software we have, making sure we have backups of the most recent versions and so on. What bothers me is what I found on this job during the first day. The company’s engineering package we use all the time, the one that is the envy of all our competition, was never purchased. It is a pirate copy. Well of course, I went to my boss. He told me that the basic version of this software cost £ 10,000, and that spending that kind of money would set us back years against the competition. He said that he expected to be able to afford the software in a year or two, but at the moment we wouldn’t be able to make competitive bids if we were to buy it. I hope you can tell me how Islam solve this issue by giving Hadith and Ayat ul Qur’an. Jazakallah Khoir. Salam.

Fatwa

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Publication Date

2002-03-16

Main Subjects

Financial and Accounting Sciences
Religion
Islamic Studies

Topics

• Islamic jurisprudence
• Intellectual property
• Pirates

No. of Pages

2

Data Type

Fatawa

Language

English

Record ID

BIM-725026

• APA
• MLA
• AMA