ODESA, APRIL, 15th, 2010, CONTEXT-PRICHERNOMORIE – Head of MS Іntellectual Property Dept in Ukraine Yuriy Omelchenko stated over 60 companies minimum to sell pirated software in Odesa, Context-Prichernomorie correspondent reports.

Mr Omelchenko stated it today 15 April during a press-conference.

“I regularly carry out ‘Secret Shopper’ programme – these are specially trained people going round trade centres: selling companies, offices, service centres (companies providing PC repair and software installation) asking to sell software to them. The statistic data are as follows: over 60 companies gladly offered their services to us too. At that there was a big amount of big shops providing this kind of service, national distribution networks – they instal a pirated copy of any software right in the middle of the shop floor. It is worth mentioning that the price of the service itself is slowly approaching the price of license software”, he stressed.

According to Mr Omelchenko, the Mystery Shopper programme initiated by Microsoft demonstrated after visiting 67 trade centres, 67 percent of them were service centres that offered pirated software, this index was significantly lower in p retail points – amounting to 26 percent.

The next stage of the programme is to be carried out in Odesa in May covering over 200 companies.