A Nairobi court sentenced a director of an engineering firm to a year in prison for copyright infringement of software.
If Kariuki Muchemi, the director of Interconsult Engineers Ltd, is to avoid jail, Senior Resident Magistrate TN Sinkiyian has ordered him to pay a fine of Sh120,000.
The magistrate also sentenced him to pay Sh240,000 in compensation to Ideate Technologies, Kenya’s authorized reseller of the software, or serve an additional 10 months in prison.
Muchemi was found guilty of copyright infringement on two counts. He was found with computers that included illegal AUTOCAD 2009 and 2013 software belonging to Autodesk Inc.
The magistrate further ordered that the program be removed from Muchemi’s computers in the presence of KECOBO officers and that any disc-based devices be transferred to KECOBO for destruction.
