A Canadian software company is warning others to beware of a Chinese company that effectively swiped intellectual property, costing the Canadian company potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars..Tracker Software Products, creator of the popular PDF-XChange Editor, the fastest and most feature-rich free PDF viewer/editor on the market — is an international company soon to celebrate its 25th birthday — headquartered in the quaint seaside town of Chemainus, south of Ladysmith on Vancouver Island..Despite the pandemic, business was going well for Tracker, until a Chinese company became involved..“Originally, we sold an SDK kit (a set of software-building tools for a specific platform and a framework or group of code libraries such as a set of routines specific to an operating system) allowing other software authors to build our technology into their custom applications for their own use,” said Manager Chris Attrell..“One of the key licensing conditions imposed by us on the licensee is that the technology may not be used to create a general PDF editing application that would be considered in competition with our own.”. BC company targeted by Chinese rip-off scheme warns othersTracker manager, Chris Attrell .Tracker’s application software is sold around the world, often to governments, and other large enterprises, although PDF-XChange is used in many small office and home applications too..It was such a user who first contacted Tracker with some startling news..“So in the last year … one of our customers informed us there was this product on the market, a PDF editor from a Chinese company, that looked an awful lot like ours,” recalled Attrell..Kakasoft Service does indeed offer software, but something about it was familiar..“Apparently, Kakasoft somehow got a license for one of our developer kits from several years earlier, but we cancelled that licence. (Kakasoft) was a completely new company that didn’t look like anything related to the original company that we cancelled the licence for,” Attrell said..The Chinese company basically created a facade program that, once a user opened the application, it was obviously Tracker’s software..“The developer kit allows you to put in almost a facsimile of our end-user product that you can customize, but the terms are it’s to be used within the application of the licensing Software Publisher and must represent only a small subset of the overall feature base of the product offered,” said Attrell..“But all (Kakasoft) did was dress it up a little bit, and then just basically use the facsimile of our own product and passed it off as theirs.”.To add insult to injury, Kakasoft sold the product at half what Tracker charges..That was only the beginning of the nightmare..With little legal recourse, Attrell said all Tracker could do was go after the payment processors, middlemen who take the cash in exchange for the product..“We found out who was providing them their online payment processing (one in Holland, another in Massachusetts,”) Attrell said..All the info was sent to the company’s lawyers and after reviewing the evidence presented, the Dutch company cancelled Kakasoft’s business transactions with them across the board without hesitation..The US middlemen, however, took more convincing..“They required certain forms to be completed and wouldn’t tell us exactly what to do … but they kind of left hints and breadcrumbs (and) I did what they asked.”.Despite Attrell’s efforts, the US company still did nothing to stop the illegal sales of Tracker Software..After two more weeks of being given the runaround, the US company finally agreed to stop selling the Chinese counterfeits — but were quite happy to continue selling Kakasoft’s other products.As a result of the experience with the Chinese rip-off company, Tracker has discontinued offering its SDK’s and is refusing to sell any of its products to Mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau..“We will not change this policy unless the manner in which China and its governing regime interacts with the rest of world in every regard and this is done in a more open and globally responsible manner,” Tracker said in a release on its website..To date, Attrell said he has no exact figures on what the Chinese company cost Tracker..“We just don’t know because we don’t have any idea of what their sales figures are. And we can’t get (the figures) from the payment processors because we have no legal access to pursue the company itself.”.Attrell wants the Tracker story to serve as a warning for other Canadian companies about to do business with certain other countries..“I would say that, in countries like … Russia and other non democratic countries , where we in the West don’t have a lot of legal reach, it’s too expensive to pursue,” he said..Mike D’Amour is the British Columbia Bureau Chief for the Western Standard..,.mdamour@westernstandardonline.com
