Bad news for Comet (currently being sold to OpCapita). Microsoft is accusing them of producing counterfeit Recovery Disks for Vista and XP and shipping them off to be sold in their stores across the UK. Some 94,000 copies were made and sold.
"Comet’s actions were unfair to customers. We expect better from retailers of Microsoft products — and our customers deserve better, too." - David Finn, associate general counsel, worldwide anti-piracy and anti-counterfeiting at Microsoft.
MS does state its policy rather clearly:
“Reinstallation media, sometimes called a recovery disc, is typically included with a new or used PC purchase. Because the software is already preinstalled, the reinstallation or recovery media is provided so that you can reinstall or recover the software if it stops working properly. Recovery disks are not licensed to be sold separately from the PC they were shipped with; if you try to install software from a recovery disk on a PC other than the one it was originally shipped on, you may not be able to activate and/or use it.
Note: For some PCs, such as netbooks, the recovery media might be installed on a separate partition on the PC’s hard drive itself. Refer to the documentation that came with your PC to locate the appropriate reinstallation/recovery media.” - http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/howtotell/Hardware.aspx#PCPurchase
However, I don’t know when that was posted publicly. It seems awfully specific to the case involved, and I couldn’t verify when that issue actually arose between Comet and MS.
Comet says that the piracy accusation is nonsense because although they are producing them, MS’s IP isn’t being threatened:
"[Comet]…sought and received legal advice from leading counsel to support their view that the production of recovery discs did not infringe Microsoft's intellectual property. Comet firmly believes that it acted in the very best interests of its customers. It believes its customers had been adversely affected by the decision to stop supplying recovery discs with each new Microsoft operating system based computer. Accordingly Comet is satisfied that it has a good defence to the claim and will defend its position vigorously." – http://www.itpro.co.uk/638119/comet-accused-of-counterfeiting-windows-cds
Comet feels it acted in the best interests of the customer. Their own, as well. These disks do have MS software on them, although I doubt it would be any different from a Recovery Disk you could make yourself.
If you bought a Recovery Disk from them, MS isn’t coming after you. MS claims to be sympathetic to end users.
Source:
http://www.infopackets.com/news/business/microsoft/2012/20120117_uk_retail_giant_sold_counterfeit_windows_says_microsoft.htm
http://www.itpro.co.uk/638119/comet-accused-of-counterfeiting-windows-cds
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/howtotell/Hardware.aspx#PCPurchase