Microsoft has successfully cracked down on pirated software being sold on Ebay recently and have won significant damages from the Trading Standards Institute's twelve month investigation.

Ron Gainsford, chief executive of the Trading Standards Institute, said, "We support Microsoft in the fight against software piracy� Consumers should be vigilant when purchasing goods online such as software, and should buy from reputable traders with means for recourse should something go wrong."

Microsoft had been alerted when UK customers started complaining about the poor quality of the purchased software. Zoobon, the online trader who had sold the pirated software allegedly sold over �3m and settled out of court. They have since ceased trading and have paid substantial damages to Microsoft.

Michala Alexander, Microsoft's head of anti-piracy, said: "We take our responsibility seriously to protect consumers and legitimate channel partners from counterfeit software�This was a major counterfeit operation selling goods which were hard to distinguish from the genuine article. By working with eBay, Zoobon has been taken out of business."

This isn't Microsoft's first run-in with pirated software. They've been fighting numerous fronts against anti-pirating for quite some time now. Slowly but surely Microsoft has made significant headway in their fight against counterfeit software and Zoobon has been the latest of their victories.